Welcome And Meet Vern Venard

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Today I am camped out in the Crystal Vision studio with a guitar player, a sideman, a producer, and a practitioner of martial arts. Hey you guys, it's Randy Halsey with Backstage Pass Radio. My guest this afternoon is a friend who not only serves as a major contributor to Backstage Pass Radio, but he has also shared the stage with me on many occasions throughout the years. Don't go anywhere, and I will take you behind the scenes so you can get to know my friend Vern Venard, and we'll do that right after this.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Each week we take you behind the scenes of some of your favorite musicians and the music they created. From chart-topping hits to underground gems, we explore the sounds that move us and the people who make it all happen. Remember to please subscribe, rate, and leave reviews on your favorite podcast platform. So whether you're a casual listener or a die hard music fan, tune in and discover the magic behind the melody. Here is your host of Backstage Pass Radio, Randy Holse.

SPEAKER_05 1:11

I am here in the Crystal Vision studios with Vern Venard. Vern, what's going on, bud?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

What's up, man?

SPEAKER_05 1:17

Good. I'm doing good, man. It's kind of a gloomy day outside. I we were talking right before we hit the record button, and I said, usually there's some nice light coming in through this room, but now it's we're trying to artificial light it up here a little bit. So and and I really don't do much with the cameras. So this will be interesting to say the least.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

That's what you get for having me on.

SPEAKER_05 1:41

Throw me a little curveball today. I love it. I love it, man. Well, I appreciate you being here and uh sharing your story with the listeners of Backstage Pass Radio. Again, we talked a little bit before hitting the record button. And I said, Man, you know, I uh I I've played quite a few shows with Vern. I've known Vern for I think I was doing the math the other day, and I think it was like seven years now. And uh and it never I guess it just never crossed my mind to invite you onto the show. And I said, you know, it wasn't it was not because I didn't want to or I did want to. It was just like it it never registered. But I'm glad you're here, man, because I know that being a an axe slinger yourself and touring in Europe with Zach and whatnot, I I'm sure you got some good stories to tell.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

I I'm really honored to be here. Um, it's a strange experience because I've listened to the show, you know, I've helped you uh technically on on editing some of the episodes and and uh a couple of co-hosting things, and so it's you know, it's neat to to be sitting in this chair. Um and like I was telling you earlier, I you asked me, and of course I was like, yeah. And then I thought, what the hell are we gonna talk about? And then I started thinking, and I was like, well, I don't have a lot to show for it, but man, I have some experiences.

SPEAKER_05 3:05

So you know Well, you've been doing this a long time, let's just be honest. I mean, you know, I I did the band thing back in the 80s, but not to the extent that you guys did it, right? And and I have a few little stories here and there, and then went on musical, like playing out hiatus for you know, I got married and started having a family, and I it's music really never crossed my mind. And then I kind of jumped back out in the game in 2016. But you you have never you've never quit, right? I mean, like this has been going on since the inception of time, right? For the most part, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Certainly the conception of me.

SPEAKER_05 3:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um well, I guess um, I'm trying to think back. I don't, I'm horrible with dates, but um somewhere, I think it was around 2019, I was playing at a place down on the strand. Uh, and I believe the place at the time was called the Island Poorhouse. And it was the first time that I ever met you. You and Zach came in. I think you you guys played in my breaks, uh, if I remember correctly, uh, because I distinct Zach telling me I can't hear myself turn it up, right? And that's you always hear that from Zach, regardless of whether he could hear it or not. And I distinctly remember, and that's the only place in Galveston that I've ever played, so it had to have been that place. And I think I probably showed you a picture of us back in that place um uh back in the day. So it's it's been a few years, and I didn't realize it's been that long.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

That's a great recall. Yeah. I don't remember the names of any place that I've played. Um, but I do remember I couldn't tell you where it was, but I remember that event.

SPEAKER_05 4:56

Yeah. And I'm sure it was probably pretty easy. I don't know, I'm sure you were living up in my area at the time and just might have been down there, but I think Zach was down, or were you living on the island at some point in time?

SPEAKER_01 5:08

No.

SPEAKER_05 5:08

Okay, I didn't think you were.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

But I I lived in League City. Um, so that was right before we moved. Okay. Uh 2019 is is when we moved out of the country. Okay. So I was I still had my house and then I sold my house, but I I didn't

Moving To France Then COVID Hits

SPEAKER_01 5:30

come up to this neck of the woods until after I moved back.

SPEAKER_05 5:33

Okay. And when you say out of the country, this is uh this is France that you're talking about, right? It weren't you guys was it Pro Assart that you guys were in, or were you somewhere else in France?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

That's the village that we lived in.

unknown 5:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:46

Okay. And now is this where Olivia is she in Pro Assart or is she somewhere close to Pro Assart? Close by. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Same region, different village. Yeah. Um, and that's where I built my recording studio. Awesome. Uh but yeah, so we that was right before we moved.

SPEAKER_05 6:03

Well, I guess the whole story behind that was that um I guess you got there and you got set up, and then COVID hit, and then you had to either get out of the country or you couldn't get out of the country. There's a story there somewhere, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

So we had been touring uh we started touring Europe in in 2016, and it was three weeks at first, and then a month, and then two months, and then three months, and then before we knew it, we were doing uh three month tours twice. And we were like, you know, at this point, shit, why don't we just move over? Of course. So um I found a place to rent that was very un uh European in the sense that it was enormous. Houses over there tend to be much smaller than than we're used to. And this was not small. So I built a recording studio. That was my plan before we moved. And when I say we moved, I sold my house and took everything with me.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Built this place, and you know, for for a bunch of musicians, our timing was pretty bad.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

Um how was how's one to know though, right? That the world was gonna freaking shut itself down.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Right. Uh so we had been there six or seven months building this thing, and it was working, right? I had so over there the thing was one, they'd walk in and see the place, and they were impressed because it was so big. And two, we were American. And every musician over there wanted to work with an American because let's face it, we invented rock and roll. Right, sure. So I had a lot of people interested, they were signing contracts, you know, to to record, and um uh then COVID hit and over there it hit in December of eight of 19. I got it in January of 20, and by March of 20 the whole planet was shut down. And I was like a lot of other people. I'm like, okay, I'm good. This is gonna be gone by May. Yeah, it's just a flu. Of course it wasn't, and so I reached a point uh towards the end of that summer where I had just enough money where I could get all my stuff back over here, because it's not cheap to uh to move everything, get a container and put it on a boat and move it. So I had just enough money left that I could get everything back or where I could be broke and speak the language, or stay there where I could be broke and not speak the language. Right. So, you know, it was a pretty easy decision. But um it's a quite an undertaking to be able to do that. So uh it was the end of October 2020 when when I moved back.

unknown 9:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 9:17

And you never wound up going back, huh?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

I've been back uh I meant to to live.

SPEAKER_05 9:22

I know you've I know you've been back to tour, but I but but not to live, right?

unknown 9:27

No.

SPEAKER_05 9:28

Well, I guess speaking of of Zach Perry, uh for the listeners that we've referred to Zach a couple of times, and just to be clear, uh Zach Perry, uh of Zach Perry and the beautiful things, right? Um, you know, I think you've been, and I don't I don't have any math to to compare to, but um I I think you guys have been paired up for 30 plus years now, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:54

Has that been a pretty solid thing, or was there a break in there somewhere, or is it has it been a contiguous 30 30 years? Almost, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

There was one

Thirty Years In One Band

SPEAKER_01 10:05

break, uh which we refer to as my sabbatical.

unknown 10:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 10:09

Um wait, you had one of those too? Chris had one of those, man. There's something about people that play with Zach that needs sabbaticals. We'll we'll get to that in a minute, but go ahead and finish your uh finish your thought process there.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Um where I I uh you know was not there. But other than that, it's been completely and totally yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:32

Well, share with the listeners, you know, real quick, 30 years is is a long time. You know, I when I said 30 years, I think of bands. Um, and I I happen to glance out of the corner of my eye, and there's a purple guitar hanging on the wall there that's signed by the guys from Loverboy. And when we think about um tenure in a band or partnerships in a band, you think about, you know, you look at the uh the purple guitar, which the listeners can see, and then you look at this black one right here, zebra, right? These are two bands that for over 40 years now, it's all original members except for uh Spider, who plays bass and Loverboy, but that's only because the original bassists drowned, you know, early on. And other than that, the whole band's still intact. And that's that's a testament, right? For guys to stick around that long with each other, because at the end of the day, it's a relationship. And I think you and I both know a lot of times relationships just don't last for one reason or another, right? So 30 years is a long time.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah, it is, and it's either easier or harder, depending on how you look at it, when there's very little money involved. I I used to think that that made it harder. And so, you know, Zach and I were even more triumphant, but that's usually the cause of a lot of the breakups. So it could actually be easier.

SPEAKER_05 12:07

Well, they what do they say? Money's the root of all evil, right? And I think there's probably a lot of truth in that adage. Um, but it's interesting that you say that because when as I sat and tried to digest, what does that even mean? I I guess I can understand where you're coming from because just because you're broke doesn't mean you're not successful, right? At the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:34

You could still be doing really great productive stuff and still not have copious amounts of money in the bank, right? Is my point. You could be writing hit songs or or songs in general or what or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, yeah. And that's what we've always tried to do, you know. So I used to think, like I said, that the fact that there was no money involved made us even more accomplished. Um, because why would anyone, you know, want to continue for three decades when there's there's no payback? The payback is there because we controlled all our own production. The recordings were always, you know, us. And and we were the the showrunners, so to speak, the artwork, the everything. There was very little input from outside forces. And we always tried to get better, you know. Um every record was uh a culmination of every all all the mistakes that I made as an engineer and a mix engineer and all that so that they wouldn't happen again. Yeah and continually try to sound better. And you know, I know with Zach's craft of of the songwriting, uh it was the same thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Um so the fact that there wasn't money clouding it actually kind of makes it more genuine.

SPEAKER_05 13:59

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

And that look, there's there must be one reason why we're why we're doing this, and it's because we think that it's good shit. Yeah.

unknown 14:07

Right?

SPEAKER_05 14:08

Well, what yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, money can cloud a lot of things. I mean, money can cause um even even in a uh a boy-girl or just a relationship like that, a love relationship or a marriage or an engagement, the money can still, even if you have a lot of it, it can still be the point of contention between two people, right? Whether you're again, whether you're broke or whether you're loaded, money, money can't buy happiness. There, there's there's that adage too, but I I can see where it can mess a lot of things up, right? Because now you're doing it for something other than what your heart says. We're doing music because we love music instead of we're doing it for money or or the almighty dollar or whatever the case may be, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Right. Uh and I have to preface all of this by saying that were it to show up, we would be very grateful. Make no mistake, right? Make no mistake. I am not 100% anti-capitalist. Um, but the fact that it hasn't and that we're still doing it, um means, you know, to me that that there's gotta be some genuine love for the material there because otherwise that's a great reason not to do it. Of course. Um is is well, I it we certainly don't say I can't afford to leave monetarily. Yeah, yeah. But musically, I've said that many times. You know, yeah. I I can't afford to leave because uh where am I gonna find material like this? Yeah, where am I gonna find somebody that writes these kind of songs and then gives me the freedom to sit in my you know, mad scientist laboratory of my studio and just come up with my own stuff to lay on top of it and not micromanage it. You know, that took part of those 30 years to get to that point where he knows I'm gonna do what I what the part needs to be. Yeah. That's a unbelievable freedom to have musically.

SPEAKER_05 16:26

So artistic freedom, you know. I mean, that's that's how you are probably the most creative when you're just allowed to do what it is that you're good at doing, right? And not to be, oh, well, Vern, can you just change this one note or this one sound? Yeah, but I could, but then it wouldn't be me, right? So now you now you're taking away the artistic, you know, ability. You know, I've often thought Zach Zach is a very prolific songwriter, and I mean I I think the the songs just kind of pour out of that guy. It's really I I don't it's it is talk to me just I and I and I I love Zach, but I and I don't want to make this the Zach Perry show, right? But I but I do want to like ask you like as a songwriter, like what give me your thoughts around Zach and what a songwriting means to you and what it's meant over the years.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

So uh I'll give you a little bit of history and as quickly as I can. So Zach and I met in New York um 30 odd years ago, and my roommate, well, my friend was uh a guy named Tim Beatty, who just passed away. Uh and he was a phenomenal harp and lap steel player. And he played in a band called Marry Me Jane that I guitar tech for. Um they were on Sony Records, and we did an opening slot for Aerosmith. Uh we went on a tour called the Hoard

The Cassette That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Tour, which was H-O-R-R-D-E. It was Blues Travelers Festival Tour. Um, and I got I was on that tour in Buffalo, New York. Um and it was a revolving cast every year. Blues traveler, blues traveler would always be involved, and then the other artists would change. And this particular year was a band called Rusted Root, Blues Traveler, Lenny Kravitz, uh, and King Crimson. And the second stage was Mary Me Jane. So we did the show, and I hadn't and we stay stuck around so we could watch these legendary bands. And and uh I had not eaten all day. So we get back to the hotel at about midnight, and I'm gonna run across this road to get something to eat, and long story short, I get run over by a truck and it keeps going. So I go through this rehab because I broke my back when that happened, and I became Tim Beatty's roommate eventually after I because I had to give up my apartment in Brooklyn and then I went to go live back with my folks, and then of course I was rehabbed and feeling a lot better, and I was like, Well, I gotta get out of here. So I became Tim Beatty's roommate, and he had been working with this guy um from St. Louis who was living in New York. I don't know how they met. And Tim was producing his demo. And so he says to me one day, you know, you gotta meet Zach because you got run over, and he just got run over. And I'm like, This is a joke, right? He goes, No, no, no, you gotta meet him. So he gives me a copy of uh the cassette. That's how long ago that's true. And this is all the God's honest truth. I put that cassette in, and I had been playing in bands, you know, in New York for this period of time. I put that cassette in and I said, that's what I want my band to sound like. That's exactly what I want my band to sound like. I can't write songs like that, you know. I can write songs, but they never come out the way I want them to. That's what I want my band to sound like. So we went down, Zach was playing in New York, and Tim and I went and saw him, and he was still in a cast because he had gotten run over by a taxi cab.

SPEAKER_05 20:49

Yeah, I remember that story.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

So Tim Beatty goes, Look, you both got run over, you should put a band together. And a couple weeks later, they were doing a songwriter's circle at the Bitter End, I think. Yeah, it was the Bitter End. Tim Beatty, Zach Perry, Amanda Cravitt, who is the singer and songwriter in Mary Me Jane, uh, and and a couple other folks. And I go to watch it, and they're done, and we were backstage, and Zach came up to me and he said, uh, hey, I'm doing this uh like two-week tour of the Midwest. You think you can do it? And I thought he meant be the roadie, be the guitar tracker.

SPEAKER_05 21:34

The gear slinger.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah, because you know, why would anyone ask me to play roadie?

SPEAKER_05 21:38

Sure, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

And I went, Yeah, man, I can do it. I'm not doing anything now. And he goes, You play slide, right? Yeah. I didn't. Yeah. I didn't. I go, but yeah, of course. Like, holy shit, he wants me to play. So that was the start of the the next 30 years and and going, you know. And so these songs on this demo had already, you know, before there was ever any inkling that I was going to be playing, I just said this is how I want my band to sound. And started the relationship, and then you know, we just keep going. And to circle back to what you said, it's he's so prolific that it's almost a problem because it's yeah, you know, it's like we can't keep up with so many songs. Yeah, you can't keep up. And so many of them are great songs that we don't ever play because they just keep coming. Yeah, you know. Um, and it I I I think that the more I became linked to that and he and I became a partnership, um I there's a possession that is partly mine, you know. I certainly didn't write them, but sonically, my parts um I I become just as possessive over the material. Yeah, sure. Just because like so there's a song called Endless Fall, uh, which was on our Marrow record, and it's I can't pick a favorite, but it's up there, it's close. Um and I worked really hard on that one. Uh background vocals, harmonies, which is not my strength. And people call it the Oleander song because of one of the lyrics. And I, you know, they they say that to me and they're like, Oh, we love that Oleander song. And I'm like, the name, song, you know, like I get rid of the fashion.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Um, so yeah, he he's uh he he's got a a signature, yeah, which is something that a lot of people can't say. I certainly can't, songwriting-wise, that is become him, and um it he he still blows me away.

SPEAKER_05 24:19

Yeah, it's funny when you said the oleander song, and there was a song that popped into my brain, and actually there's quite a few of them, but the one that pops into my brain is a lot of people say, Hey, can you play that song Take a Load Off Fanny? Right? They don't realize that that's not the name of the song, right? And uh yeah, so it it it the oleander song made me certainly think of that. Um what do you think the draw was? Like you meet Zach, of course, you guys got uh you guys got run over by cars, right? You had that in common. But what if you had to pick one thing that you felt like this is why I was drawn to to Zach or his music, or what what do you think that one thing was that did it? What was the magnet of the relationship initially?

SPEAKER_01 25:09

It was the songs, songs, okay. That first cassette, um, you know, which is very different than than kind of what it became. Uh it had great musicians on it. They were the best, some of the best New York musicians on it, and some of the best St. Louis musicians on it. But like I said, that was I literally said out loud, that's how I want my band to that was the the initial part of it. And then when we first started, it was a it was a different band, it was a different sound in that I was the lead guitar player, you know. Zach maybe had one lead on on the first record. Um and I was really, really influenced by the Allman Brothers band. Uh, and I was a super huge Warren Haynes freak at the time. And so I really wanted to get into that twin guitar thing. And Zach was a much better guitar player than he thought he was. He would always link himself with just unbelievably good guitar players. And I'm not saying that I was one of them, but his previous guitar players were really good, like, you know, phenomenal guitar players. And so he was content to write the songs and play rhythm. And I wanted to get into the twin guitar thing. So we actually started to do that a lot, and his playing started to really come out, and that changes the dynamic of a song, right? But it never changed the format, which was he would write this thing and then bring it to the band. Yeah. And then we just see what happens. Yeah. Where does it go from there? You know, but it you could always draw it back, he could sit with an acoustic, play and sing the whole song, and it would be just as good than the whole production would be. Sure. Yeah. So, and that's not changed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:20

Do you think that your thought process or your feelings about your own playing have changed over the years since you met Zach? Because I I hear I heard something that you just say, and I hear this from Chris a lot too. And it it kind of drives me up the wall, and I'll tell you why. It drives me up the wall in a good way, though. You know, like you say, you know, he he's always had these amazing guitar players that have played with him, and you're not, you know, you you don't consider yourself one of those. But I would ask the question, why do you not, right? Because you and Chris, to me, like, and and and maybe maybe this is just Randy talking. Like, if you talk to other guitar players, maybe maybe they have a different story. But I hear this from Chris a lot where he just kind of sells his talent a little bit short. And I'm like, dude, you're like 500 times the player that I am. And like I it I don't want to hear that come out. Like, I don't tell Chris that, but it's like, I don't want to hear that come out of your mouth because you shouldn't sell yourself short. And I'm just wondering if from those days, like when you when you said, okay, Zach has always been associated with these great players, and I couldn't even play slide, even though I told him I could. Do you feel differently about your playing now versus what you did back then? Or do you still have negative like this shadow over your own playing?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Um it's it's different now. Okay. Uh and it has to do with a lot of adjacent things. You know, back then, uh and even then when after the the vacation when I came back. Sure. I was back then before the vacation, I was pretty good, you know, for my job. Yeah. Right. Um because that's all that we did, literally. That's all that we did. We play, we were playing three nights a week, every week, sometimes four. Uh, and it was just you know, and I was in my twenties and it was muscle memory, and I it was pretty good. Yeah. Um and then the way life works, you know, um the having to make a living is part of it. Yep. And when you don't have a day job, you can be pretty

How A Sideman Avoids Overplaying

SPEAKER_01 30:10

good at something. Yeah. Uh and then, you know, I got married and I never stopped playing, but I certainly had less time to dedicate to. Of course. So that was part of it. And then uh there were two well, there were two traumatic brain injuries that happened. The first one was when I got run over by the truck. That didn't seem to have any effect on me. But then there was a second one um much years later, that at the time I I didn't realize anything. And now, being a little older, that was probably something that I should have had looked at.

SPEAKER_05 30:53

You think? Yeah. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Um, but it's it's the combination of the two things, right? Um starting with partners, uh, your own company, and trying to make that work and trying to make money after, you know, a fairly catastrophic loss financially after COVID, uh, and recouping all that, and having the energy and the time to continue to put into your your art, your trade. Yeah. And finding that, like in the studio, for example, um, when we did the first record, that was in a real studio in Austin, you know, multi-million dollar studio in a guy's house, but the best gear in the world. And we had been playing so much that there was there were overdubs, but there was very little having to construct things. Solos were were single takes, you know, maybe you had to do it three or four times, sure. But it was a take from start to finish. Yeah. And there wasn't any comping of let me do three or four passes at a solo and then I'll just construct the best one, which is pretty much how I do things now. Yeah. Um, because I just don't do it as much. And there's something to be said for having a band that lives in the same house. And, you know, I'm 52, I'm not going to do that anymore. Yeah. I don't want to do that anymore. Of course.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

We've had that conversation at Nauseam, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:33

You know, but having that group of people that are like-minded and rehearsing, or if you're not rehearsing, playing so much that you're basically, you know, does just wonders. And I've I've said for a long time that there's players out there that you know blow my mind, but also have never done anything else.

SPEAKER_04 33:00

Ever. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

And if that if I was given that luxury, I'd I'd put myself up against it. Yeah. You know, yeah. But now I I don't have uh I could if I was given that luxury again, but I don't. So I I I don't think that I'm uh remotely close to what I used to be playing from a playing. From a playing street. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:32

Well, yeah, I mean, like you and I have played, I don't know, a few shows together. And I would one or two. I mean, I would like to think that if you're not as good now as you are, I would have liked to have seen you play then because I think you're pretty damn good now, right? And I just call a spade a spade at the end of the day. I don't know how else to say that. And and you know, I get a lot of nice compliments, you know, when when Chris kind of went on his sabbatical. Um he plays one way, you play a different way. And, you know, a lot of people said, Oh, I love Chris. Chris is a great player, blah, blah, blah. And then they'd say, Yeah, Vern, man, he's a he's a very tasty player. And even Chris said that, you know, Chris said, Yeah, man, you you and Vern will do well together because he's just, he's just good and he's a very tasty. He's we're we're just different players, right? How would you kind of, if you thought about that for just a second and pondered the thought of your style versus Chris's style, where do you think the difference in the playing styles would be? And for the listeners, real quick, before you answer that, Chris Hughes is my uh uh lead guitarist for the duo here that I play. And Chris had gone on sabbatical um for a while, and uh and Vern stepped in to play. And um, so that's kind of the backstory there. But how would you how would you differentiate the two players playing styles?

SPEAKER_01 34:58

I think, and and I I agree with you about Chris, you know, I think he's a much better player than than he will admit to being. But I think that the the key difference is that I have had years and years of acoustic duos, which is a completely different animal than a full band. Yeah, and it's also a completely different animal than a solo performer. Oh, yeah, right? Yeah, and Chris does a lot of his stuff solo, he'll do a whole production, yeah, drum parts, everything. I mean, he's an amazingly talented guy, but that's different. Yeah. So, quote unquote being the side man and being the sideman in such a stripped down environment of a singer with an acoustic guitar and you, right, being me. Yeah, you you have to learn very quickly how to not, it's not about you. Sure. Nobody's there to see me play. Yeah. They're there to hear these songs and to see this guy sing them. Yeah. And so my job is to just make that sweeter. Yeah. And make serve the song. Serve the song and and and who's singing it. Yeah. Yeah. And so that means that I try to stay out of the way. Of course. Uh, without, you know, I don't want anyone to look at it and go, why is this guy here?

SPEAKER_05 36:34

Right. Why is he overshadowing this? Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

That or why is he standing there at all? Yeah. Like he's not doing anything. Yeah, sure. It's this really fine line between making it sweeter or overplaying. So I have a lot of years doing that. Yeah. And I think that's probably the big difference, is that um, you know, and and also Chris knows those songs, and purposefully, I don't learn them. I just need to know what key it's in. Yeah. Because I don't want to sit there and and unless it's unless it serves the song. I don't want to sit there and double your rhythm part every song. Of course. Because it doesn't need it. Takes away from your guitar playing. And it leads me to find different voicings of chords. It leads me to find something that is chordal, but also, you know, I'm not just licking over it. It's it's a chordal thing, but backing it up nicely. Yeah. And that comes from years of doing it. Many times Zach, you know, and I would be playing some club, and uh he'd go, here, check this one out. I I'd never heard it. And it was an original, you know. Shit, dude, what key is this in? You know, it's like, I think it's G. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 38:09

We'll figure it out as we go, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah, well, that means you figure it out.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

Yeah, he already knows it, right? You gotta figure it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

But you do that enough times and you're kind of like, okay, you know, I'm not gonna learn this song. I'm just gonna go with it. Yeah. And you end up coming up with some some unique voicings or something like that. Uh so I would say that that's probably the biggest difference.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:34

Um so so you met so you met Zach, New York City. This is in Manhattan, I'm I'm assuming in the city, right? Um, but you're originally from Morristown, New Jersey, right? Talk to me a little bit about growing up up in the Northeast. What was growing up like for Vern?

SPEAKER_01 38:57

I, you know, I mean, I my childhood was amazing. Um I I say, so the second greatest thing that my parents ever did, a lot of people will look at it like, oh, that's too bad. My parents got divorced when I was like four. Okay. Four or five. It's the second greatest thing they ever did. The first being, of course, making me. Yeah. But they were so different, so different, yeah, that had they not split up, I think I'd it would have been a shit show. I think I'd be a pretty fucked up guy.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

Um, and then after that, both finding partners legitimately. So I basically grew up with four parents that stayed the same. Um, you know, my parents did very well when I was growing up. So I never wanted for anything. And my dad was not far, so I saw everybody the same, you know, uh enough. Yeah, the the split was great. Um, I was given a tremendous education, and I think that that was uh a gift, yeah, to to be able to have that. Um the music

New Jersey Childhood And Leaving College

SPEAKER_01 40:20

thing was weird because nobody in my family does it. Nobody in my family can carry a tune in a bucket. Music interesting music fans, but that's it. And if you talk to my dad, I've I've been doing it since I was two. I don't remember the event. Um, but apparently when I was two, I at about three o'clock in the morning I climbed out of whatever apparatus I was sleeping in, went, made my made it outside, and started banging on the garbage cans, which back then were the the metal oscuration. Of course, yeah. Um the first thing that I remember was having my dad, you remember the old uh Quaker oats containers? Sure, I do.

SPEAKER_05 41:15

I got one in the kitchen right now because I'm a big oatmeal eater. The tube, right? Yeah, sure. Cardboard, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Cutting the top off, which you do to get the oatmeal out, and then my dad putting a string through it so I could wear it around my neck. And well, and I was about five, four or five, and walk around and pound on this thing like a drum. Sure. That was my first instrument was drums when I was eight. Uh and then I started playing guitar when I was twelve. Um, and pretty soon that's all that I did. That's all that I wanted to do. I played sports only because you kind of have to. Yeah. And I was awful. Um, so my thing was was you know playing music.

SPEAKER_05 42:09

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

And I went to one of the best uh private high schools in in New Jersey, which back when I went to high school was you know, uh my parents paid a tuition each year, which was ridiculous then. I can't imagine what it is now. With the sole purpose of you know preparing you to go to a good school, which I didn't really get into. Uh I got into BU. I went, and I had already kind of been going into the city, which is what you call it when you live in New Jersey. It wasn't very far. New York was about 25 miles, and I had been going in, you know, that that 17, 18-year-old, as you do, had a group of people that I knew, um, knew a couple of musicians, and the only college that I got into was BU. I went for about two weeks and was miserable, just miserable. And the only reason that I picked BU is because Berkeley was up there, and I thought, well, I'll just go hang out with those guys. Uh so I left. I got on a bus and I left Boston to go to New York so I could be where I wanted to be with the people I wanted to be. But I didn't tell anybody. I told my college roommate, if my parents call, this is back before cell phones, you know, Google it, kids. Yeah. Uh I had a I had a pager, and I said, if my parents call, just page me with 911 and I'll call them. So for a couple of months, I kept up this this uh ruse that I was at college. When I wasn't. Yeah. And I was in New York. And I just I went to local shows. I went to everybody that came into town that played, you know, the clubs. Um, I roadied, I guitar tech, I did anything I could to stay with it in that realm uh until I had I didn't even fail my exams that first semester. I just wasn't there. Yeah. It was just like incomplete. Yeah. Yeah. And I went to my parents, you know. I I was really afraid of my dad, his what his reaction was going to be, right? He was a naval officer, buttoned up, that kind of guy. And I was really afraid. And I told him, and he was like, that's great. I wish I knew what I wanted to do when I was your age. Just so you know, this is it. If you decide to go back to school, that's on you. Or you can go back now and I'll cover it. And I'm like, I'm good, man.

unknown 45:05

I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

So that's what I did. And uh then I moved into Manhattan uh when I was 20. I was 20.

SPEAKER_04 45:19

Okay. And that's young too. I was 19 or 20. Yeah. Well, I think I was 19.

SPEAKER_05 45:25

I think, you know, it it sounded like, you know, there's been a lot of travels over the years for sure, but I think your your travels later took you from New York, and and you correct me where I'm wrong, but from New York out to St. Louis, right? And is that because that's where Zach was at the time?

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Yeah. So there was a there was a pit stop in there, but Zach and I were both living in that area. He he had moved out to New Jersey. Um I was living in Weehawken, and he was living in Jersey City, which is for those that don't know, is right on the Hudson River. So you know, Manhattan is a 10-minute bus ride. Yeah. Um and we did that first tour of St. Louis, and he kind of came back and said, you know, I can get a lot more going back out there. Let's go to Memphis. I got a buddy in Memphis. He said we can stay at his house. And uh, you know, it's Memphis. I mean, shit. That's music. Yeah. So I was like, yeah, screw it, let's go. So we did. We moved down there, and he let us stay at his house, and we started to go to work with him. He was framing houses. So we were framing houses. And you know, Zach has a history in his working days of of that kind of labor. He he's actually quite an accomplished carpenter. I d I was a bartender. That was the extent of my non-musical work experience.

SPEAKER_05 47:14

So you did you you didn't swing a hammer then?

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Well, every time I did, I would come home with a new injury.

SPEAKER_05 47:21

You'd hit your not supposed to hit your knee, dude.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

You're supposed to hit the nail. Right. You're supposed to hit the nail, hold the hammer up here, and then I'd hit myself in the head or something.

SPEAKER_05 47:29

It was like a whole Three Stooges episode every time when you went to work.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Self-contained.

SPEAKER_05 47:34

You were a curly Larry Edmund.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

I mean, if we want to talk about out of your element. Yeah, sure. So we would go at like four o'clock in the morning because it was in the summertime, and by one, you you can't keep going. It's just too hot. So um we would do that. I would get injured. They the rest of the crew would be like, look, just go put these hammer clips on the you know, where the joist meets the wall, and try not to hurt yourself, just so I would stay out of the way. Yeah, yeah.

unknown 48:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

I'd come home, we'd eat something, and by 6 30, I was passed out because it was so exhausting. Yeah. So then Zach went to St. Louis, um left me there. He's like, look, let me get something moving in St. Louis. Uh his son's mom was up there, and and uh, and then I'll I'll let you know, and then you can come up. So that was for about three months. Uh, and then he said, Yeah, come up to St. Louis. I found this studio, and you can work there. Because I had gone to school after the fact for recording in New York. And he said, You can work there, you can run all that stuff, right? This is what this was the second occasion of Zach saying, You can do X, and me going, Absolutely, and the answer being no.

SPEAKER_05 49:02

It sounds like you were a pathological liar growing up, right, to me, but uh but you did what you needed to do to get by. I I think you take it. You're given. Right, there you go. And make them what you want to make them make them work. It's called making hay while the sun shines, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:18

That's right. So that's what I did. I went up there and uh I bullshit my way through this interview with the studio owner. They were gonna record Zach, so you know that was part of it. And they had a room above it, and that's where I stayed. Um I I was in St. Louis. Zach and I were in St. Louis for I think two years.

SPEAKER_05 49:49

Well, I think there was something, I mean, I I I recall a conversation at some point in time, I think, about there was something unique about this um the digs that you were staying in there, right? Living above the studio. What what's the backstory there?

SPEAKER_01 50:06

Yeah. So when I say I lived above the studio, this was a a um like a loading garage originally, right? Big roll-up door in the back, storefront door in the front, office, and then everything behind that was just kind of built out in this giant space without regard for finishing work, right? Nobody really cared how it looked, provided the doors shut and it was soundproof. So then above that, but still in the same space, we're we're sharing the roof, right? There's no roof line, there's no uh privacy really. They just built a stairway for storage above the the studio. So there were two of them, one on each side, and then a big rehearsal room that you could go into. So it was just a room above this built-out studio, right? So I literally lived in the studio, but above it. And it was just a room I showered, you know, with like a camp shower in the corner up there because they never ran the plumbing.

SPEAKER_02 51:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Uh and I got I didn't get paid. I got paid when they could, kind of deal. But I wasn't paying anything to stay there. And what ended up happening was uh so this is uh ninety-nine ninety-eight roughly. And I would work during the day uh primarily with one s session that never seemed to leave, and that would shut down at five o'clock roughly every day. So then from five to whenever I could sit in these in the studio and basically just learn for free. It was really a cool thing. They had gotten the new Pro Tools, so it started out with ADAT. I don't know, you remember ADAT? I don't remember that one now. Digital tape that kind of looked like a VCR tape with eight tracks per machine. You had three, okay, 24 tracks. Okay. It was tape, but it was digital tape. And they right after I showed up and started working there, they got to the Pro Tools, which at the time was I think Pro Tools 3. So when I went to school for recording, they didn't even teach you that. It wasn't, yeah, it really wasn't a technology that of course not, you know. So you learned everything, including digital tape at the end, no computer. The big studio went to Pro Tools, uh, Studio B was still ADAT, and I was really comfortable, so we'd sneak the band in there at night and record. And Zach was like, You gotta learn that. You gotta learn that Pro Tools stuff. And I'm like, I I don't know, man. You know, like tapes working pretty well. Yeah. We'll see where that goes. I was always very tech savvy, and it didn't sound great. Sounded okay. He's like he was adamant about you have to learn that. So I would sit in there at night on Pro Tools, you know, and just learn how this thing works. Sure. And it it ended up being the de facto tool.

SPEAKER_05 54:01

Yeah, even today it's the de facto, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

You know, and and I can do things on it that a lot of people don't learn because I just had hours and hours and hours of sitting there by myself working on this stuff. So it ended up being pretty good uh for my uh

Memphis Work Then A St. Louis Studio

SPEAKER_01 54:20

my capability. Sure.

SPEAKER_05 54:22

What's the um the um was there something who who owned the studio? Was it um what what was the backstory on the studio there? I think there were some ties to uh uh a bigger band or something.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Yeah, so the guy that owned it, his name was Bill Keys, and um I'm not sure exactly how he fell into it. Uh he had very little musical talent. He he wasn't a musician that I'm aware of, um, but he had money and so he built the studio and he was constantly looking for the um the connection, the guy that was gonna bring in the work. And he settled on a guy named Rich Landers who was from St. Louis originally but had spent years in Nashville in the 70s. Okay. 70s, 80s, the Bobby Bear days and and you know, the the formation of Music City, right? Turning out these records. So he had a style production-wise. I think he had two songs that he wrote that Bobby Bear recorded, uh, came back to St. Louis, and started a management company that got Marty Ballin, who was the lead singer and one of the songwriters for for Jefferson Airplane, and then Jefferson Starship. And so he decided that, you know, and it's funny if you start with Bill Keys, it's just one guy attaching himself to another guy who's attaching himself to another guy to create a career. And here I am down at the bottom trying to attach myself to those same people. And he's like, We're gonna do Marty Ballon's greatest hits. Um, Volunteers and Miracles, and anybody that's an airplane fan knows these songs without you, and and but he couldn't get the mechanical licensing to any of those recordings, which you need if you're gonna do a greatest hits record with the original recordings. Yeah, as the songwriter, Marty Ballin owned the rights to the songs, but not the recordings. So Rich Lander said, we're just gonna record all of them from scratch. So he goes out to get the greatest musicians in St. Louis to do this. Marty, and Marty's touring guitar player. And uh I'm gonna be the engineer. So I'm the engineer, and I end up playing guitar on all the songs, mixing it, mastering it, because Rich Landers couldn't get the Nashville sound out of his head, and we were absolutely not ever going to achieve that, right? We're using good outboard gear, but we're going into Pro Tools, there's no tape. So he would come in at about 7:30 or 8 o'clock every morning. I was out, right? Because I had been in the studio doing my own stuff or learning until four in the morning. So I'm completely passed out upstairs. He would come in and start listening to the songs and trying to get this sound in his head that he had. All the tracking is pretty much done. So every morning for about 12 months, I woke up to this Marty Ballon song called When Love Comes. Loud. Loud. Because Rich Landers had two things about him that anybody that knew him knows. He smoked about three and a half packs of cigarettes a day, and he was deaf. You know, not legally deaf, but pretty deaf from years of doing it. So it was loud, and that was my alarm clock. And I got up and you know, eventually fumbled down the stairs, came in to work, and he goes, Oh, good, you're here. All right, let's get to work. And the day was over when he was out of cigarettes. Yeah, yeah, of course. That's when the session was over. So uh I got to the point where again I was learning just trial by fire. Yeah, you know, but he's like, let's we gotta figure out how to make it sound like X. And so I would really try to do that. And also got to the point where uh a couple years later, um, I was in a an airport like magazine shop and or a grocery store somewhere, I can't remember, but Mirror, the original Miracles came on, and I had these flashbacks, you know, like it was Vietnam because I had just heard that song so many times over and over again. The second thing that he had was he had recordings that he had made on like one of those micro cassette recorders of Marty at his house telling stories about the 60s. So he wanted to put that on the album and that we could we could make him tracks, you know. So here he's talking about Jerry Garcia. Let's make that a track.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Here he's talking about Janice, right? But Marty lived in Miami with a big house on the beach, so all those recordings he's talking, and you're hearing as these waves are crashing from the Atlantic. Yeah. So he gives it to me and says, you know, fix it. Because one of the things when I was at school was, you know, audiology, which is the forensics of taking a sound and pulling it out of noise and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:42

Not to interrupt your conversation, but this sounds exactly like what I have you do for how did I know you were the guy to do that, right? Like, because I always say, hey, Vern, this one's over my head, man. I need your help here, right? So, all right, carry on with your story there.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

And as you know from me doing that, there's only so much that can be done. Of course, right? So it was Rich, this is as good as it's gonna get. I've taken his voice. I can't make the waves go away. Yeah, you know, and this is also the technology wasn't where it is today.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:19

Well, yeah, but it's not like the waves had their own track, right? Where you could remove them, right? It was all lumped into the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

That would have made life so much.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:28

Sure it would have. Like I th I could have probably pulled that one off, right? But yeah, not all lumped in together.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:34

Well, I guess he Marty Bauman, he must have been pre, so he was pre-Mickey Thomas then with Jefferson Starship.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:45

Yeah, correct.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:46

And I think Mickey, I don't remember what year Mickey came in, but I remember being a huge Starship fan around like 81 when the modern times record came out, and then I think 82 it was uh uh maybe uh what was it, Winds of Change, I think. And then I I think maybe I maybe I'm pronouncing his name right or wrong, Craig Chiquiso came in. I know he was on, I think he's I'm pretty sure that he played on the modern times record, but very unique guitar sound. And of course, Mickey Thomas, one of the best out there, right? Even back from the the Elvin Bishop days. Um you know, we talked about coming up and you know, beating on the oatmeal cans and playing the guitar, which by the way, oatmeal was my pregame hockey meal. When I was a hockey player, oatmeal was the pregame meal for the 13 years that I played. So I'm very familiar with the can. I'm very familiar with the food, uh, a little peanut butter and sugar in there. And it was just enough, you know, to fill you up where you didn't have to go sit down and eat a dinner, but it it wasn't heavy where it slowed you down either. It just worked, it just worked for me for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

You were ahead of the times because maybe that didn't really come out. That's it. I've never heard that before.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:12

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:13

But that didn't really come out, you know, until maybe 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:17

Yeah, maybe, yeah. Yeah, I don't remember. This my my playing days would have been um look at you biohacking. Yeah, so I left so I have to correlate it to my to my work life. So I left Compaq in 2001. So and I was playing, I was playing this. So it would have been like 90, 97, like the mid mid-90s through, you know, like the 2005, 2008 time frame were were when I was playing. So yeah, the those were the oatmeal days for sure. It's literally a long time ago. Yeah, so a long time ago, but still to this day, I'm I'm like, Terry, are we out of oatmeal? God damn it. Go to the go to the grocery store and please get some oatmeal in this house. Get two cans so we have it, right? Like it's sometimes it's just like what I want to eat before, you know, for dinner. Like, I don't want anything, I don't want it to be a production. Just boil some water, make some oatmeal, and call it a night, right? That's that's kind of me. But um what I was gonna say is, you know, going back to those days of you know, banging on the oatmeal can and learning to play the guitar, who were some of the some of the influences for you early on that that really inspired you when you first started picking up the guitar, right? And then well, the same question, but who inspires you maybe now? Who do you look at for like, oh yeah, I like that guy, I like that guy. Maybe not, maybe not inspire, right? I mean, that's some people just don't get inspired by people, but they like certain people's playing style. But take us back to the childhood days and who who was doing it for you from a from a guitar player perspective?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:12

Um Edward Van Halen.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:15

Most people have heard of that guy, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

Hands down. Yeah. Um he was the guy he he made me want to pick a guitar up as a kid. And um I I was in junior school, which in New Jersey is uh seventh and eighth grade, and you switch schools. So you go to your elementary school one through six, and then you switch schools. And in New Jersey, every town has its own school system. Yep. So maybe they have three elementary schools, one junior school. So you get this influx of kids like a feeder.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:53

The junior high is the feeder school. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:55

You get these influx of kids that you don't know. And I was in seventh grade. grade and I you know I didn't I knew that you could play the guitar obviously because I was seeing Ed Van Halen on on MTV or uh seeing guitar players. I think I knew who Jimi Hendrix was. But I didn't really know that I could play it because it wasn't in school. The instrument that I played they had in school right drums were a thing you could play in in school at that age. So that's the one I went to because it was rock and roll and they offered it. Go to junior school and they do a talent show and it's funny the things you remember I'll never forget a kid comes out named Alex Danzick and he and he's my age and he plays he's got his drummer buddy and he plays the intro to Hotford Teacher into Eruption and plays Eruption note for note. And I was my jaw was on the floor because not only was this kid my age but he's doing my guy yeah you know and so I go up to him like a complete dork uh after the talent show and and I said I you gotta show me how to do that. He's like you have a guitar? I said no he goes well you have to have a guitar that's kind of non-negotiable. The prerequisite yeah sure I said well okay what do I do? He goes you can buy mine because I just got a new one okay I'll buy it uh so it was called a West Tone it was ridiculously heavy for for you know the hockey stick I call them hockey sticks because the headstock yeah you know yeah but it was that style of guitar yeah kind of like the kind of like the Kramer right Jackson the Kramer's you know not quite that but close sure Floyd Rose on it just what I needed so I bought that from him and I said how did you learn how to do this he goes there's a guy up the street every all the cool kids are getting lessons from this guy so I started taking lessons from that guy. But what I had been doing for years before that which I didn't realize I just enjoyed it was one soundtracks I loved soundtracks. So I went to see all the movies that all the kids saw and I loved the movies Rotaries of the Lost Ark, Star Wars you know everything that was out Top Gun but then and I would usually go see them with my dad we would leave the movie after it was done and we would go to the store and I would buy the soundtrack every time so I I had this real love of you know instrumental music from a very young age and wanting to know everything I would sit there and I know you've said this on your show a couple times I was this kid at seven I'd open up the vinyl I'd put the record on and as it was playing I'd sit there and read the liner notes every record every one and then when I got a little bit older I would read every interview with whoever the artist was right uh Van Halen when I first started which quickly so seeing interviews with with Van Halen because you know I would sit

Recording Marty Balin The Hard Way

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

in front of MTV and record on on a VCR anything having to do with this band. And I heard Eddie talking about this guy Eric Clapton and that was his big influence and so oh I gotta find out who this Eric Clapton guy is go way down that rabbit hole which then brings me you know to Stevie Ray and Robert Cray which then bring me to you know Howlin's Muddy Waters and I would track it all the way back and listen to all of it while I was learning how to play um Steve Vai you know all this stuff that there's no way I could ever try and play but I would listen to it and I would watch it. And then my first concert ever was my oldest friend shout out to Tom in New Jersey his dad was a jazz drummer a good one and a real one like Buddy Rich where the snare drum is facing in the complete opposite direction. Sure he took us to see Rush and we were all drummers his son was a drummer I was a drummer so for obvious reasons he took us to see Rush and you know that was 1986 I was 12. So is that like Grace under pressure it was the one right after that okay Power Windows yeah and it was Neil you know so you had Ed Van Halen and Neil Peart which led me to everything else but those two guys were were the reason why I I picked up sticks or a guitar or or whatever. Yeah wow um and then I would get really heavy into you know I was really heavy into Stevie Ray um I I got to see him twice about a month before he died and I remember sitting I was 15 or 16 and I was I had a room in the basement with my drums my amp my guitars a television and I sat in the basement for like two days after he died just like that was my first experience of yeah you know somebody that was so influential uh going away like that um and I just I never stopped so I would just keep continuing I got really into jazz for a period of time uh my parents were great on both sides my mother and my stepfather took me to the Blue Note in New York City they had to call ahead I would think I was 15 or 16 and Stanley Jordan was playing. Oh wow Stanley Jordan for those listeners that aren't don't know plays two guitars at once he's got one on a stand one around his neck and he plays both of them at the same time and I was really into that you know Larry Carlton and Al Demiola and stuff like that. So we they called the blue note we have this our son he's 15 yeah we're gonna wear this bracelet and you know and this was before that was really a thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:28

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

And then my stepmother took me to see Lonnie Mack at the Stanhope house in Stanhope New Jersey who and I only knew who Lonnie Mack was because Stevie Ray was influenced by him. And again she had to call the club I promise he won't drink you know and I didn't because I was just like mesmerized at the foot of the stage um so it it's but it was it was Ed and and Neil Peart and then you know the older me it's weird today man you know because I I I'm gonna be that guy and I never wanted to be that guy. I always thought that I was gonna be the cool dad you know but we didn't have YouTube and we didn't have uh a a functioning internet yeah really there's there's 13 year old kids on YouTube that's insane that are doing things that you know I mean you got Bumblefoot going he's doing something I can't do yeah and and it's like I it's it's just overwhelming.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:44

Yeah um you know uh Mateo Mancuso God that guy yeah just like his his fingers just like what are you doing? Like you're pissing me off. And Guthrie Govan is another one but I have to stop yeah because well that's the guy uh Bumblefoot played yeah yeah yeah played on his last record yeah but I have to stop because it's just there's just so many you know now those guys are are way up there but there's too much yeah output.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:18

So I go back to the the you know the the old the the standbys the tried and true ones right I I got really into Jeff Beck the old when I was an older person. Uh saw him several times. Derek Trucks I've been I've been going to see Derek Trucks since before Tedesky Trucks when he and Susan put together a band called Soul Stew Revival okay which became Tedesky Trucks. And I you know it's interesting those two I don't know if they really influence my playing yeah as much as they make me want to play.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:06

Yeah no I totally get it and Al Di Miola was kind of like that like what a what a what a player and I had um I don't remember what season it was but I had a guy named Leslie Mandokie on my show and uh Tony Carey joined him so this is so Leslie Mandokie is a world renowned musician. I think he was a I'm trying to remember a story like fled Budapest back in the day like political you know the whole political thing trying to you know whatever this the whole story was but but Leslie Mandokie has the supergroup over in Europe and Tony Carey plays with him Al Di Miola plays with him like a lot of uh I think uh Steve Lukather has played with them like there's people that come in and out of this band but it's a whole super group of people that play and it's just uh pretty pretty cool stuff but it jogged my memory like first concert wow I had to think like I my first concert was the Bee Gees in Dallas uh 70 79 I think it was 79 my my dates in in my head are horrible but uh but then you know I thought about the rush stuff and I I was I went to the moving pictures I saw them on the moving pictures tour wow but I also saw them on the roll the bones tour and I remember I don't remember what year this was but me and a buddy bought a ticket and we went to the it was called the Texas Jam back in the day and it was held in the Astrodome and I remember Gary Moore Brian Adams 38 special Ozzie Osborne and Rush was headlining five five bands and I remember you know Gary Moore comes out does his thing people are like yay yay yay you know then Brian Adams yay 38 special oh cool yay fucking Ozzie comes out dude and the dome on the roof gets blown off this motherfucker right dude and it's like this is like one of the first heavy concerts like you know that I've been to and I was like what the fuck did I just witness man because this this is back in the day cigarette like now people light up cell phones in the concerts which is fucking dumb yeah right but back then you know everybody was smoking some weed and cigarettes in these places right so it was like 8000 people in this place and the dome just the roof just gets blown off this motherfucker dude and it's just like what an experience you know and this is this is prime Ozzy leaving black Sabbath day that was Randy like yeah and it was just it was crazy dude it was crazy randy oh wow and uh yeah and uh so yeah good times and I remember seeing Ozzy on his um I think it was the bar uh I think it was Bark at the moon tour and I had I had fourth row seats at the summit it was Ozzy's Bark at the moon tour and the supporting act was Motley crew on shout at the devil and sitting fourth row to that was like nothing else but I'm a huge Aussie fan like I just love Ozzy uh you know we went and saw the Oz tribute and and you and you I remember you like killed my whole buzz that night because you said Randy you know that's really not Aussie up there right I'm like telling that I know Iggy is Ozzy come on man I know Iggy if you're listening to I love you man and uh a a a great tribute man but phenomenal phenomenal yeah good stuff that guitar player was incredible oh yeah yeah for sure Kelly Fitzsimmons yeah a great player I asked him to be on the show and he said yes and then Oz took a little sabbatical themselves and he's like well I don't really want to I really don't want to come on the show you know with nothing going on right now so kind of took a rain check but I'll try to get him back on here uh sometime soon.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:17

I you know I remember that and the thing about I'm I struggle with the tribute acts right um but that guitar player if you don't and you you know you can appreciate this but you really gotta pay attention the difference between Tony and then Randy and then Jake Lee and then Zach Wilde they're ridiculously different guitar players of course they are which Ozzy kind of wanted right after Randy died he made it very clear that you know don't try to sound like Randy and even when Randy came in they didn't play a lot of Sabbath no because Randy didn't like Black Sabbath which is you know that guitar player whatever the song whoever the guitar player was for that Ozzy song he sounded like that guy. Yeah that's incredible.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:17

Yeah no he's a he's a talented dude and then you know I had Brad Gillis on the show not too long ago who kind of filled in Randy's shoes after the plane crash right and uh was on the live record he was only with Ozzy for a short time but you know he said man talk about walking in to try to fill some big shoes there I could you imagine yeah he was before he was on that tour. Yeah yeah speak of the devil yeah uh it was Blizzard of Oz I think right yeah or whatever the second record with Randy was yeah I don't yeah yeah but yeah Ozzy's had some some great players uh with him for sure well when you think of your style Vern like do you um

Guitar Heroes And First Concerts

SPEAKER_05 1:22:10

well I I guess I guess this is the question is probably different if I ask you for me versus Zach right but in in your mind when you think of yourself as a player do you consider yourself a lead guitar player for somebody or do you figure do you consider yourself just kind of like a I don't think a side man is really the right word because I think a side man's kind of what you you and I you you kind of the side guy for what I'm doing right would you agree with that and you're much more musical than I am so you you correct me right absolutely um but for Zach how what what do you feel like your part is with Zach? Do you know I'll just leave the I'll just leave the question there. Like it's it's different what you're doing with me and what you're doing with Zach, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:00

Yeah so uh and it it's different now than from what it was when we started together um when we started together at least in my head it was more of that twin guitar um almond brothers type thing but also uh again in my head image wise you know much more of a a Joe Perry Steven Tyler thing in the sense that Zach didn't play a lot of lead so you know and my job was to rip the guitar and look cool right so that's kind of the vibe that we were going for or that I was certainly going for. And then as we matured and the music changed a little bit the relationship changed it became more Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. Yeah where maybe I don't have a solo on a particular song. But my part that I'm playing to complement the lyrics and the melody and his guitar part becomes just as important. Yeah and you listen to some of those Tom Petty things that maybe there's no solo or maybe it's real understated um because the song doesn't require it. And so it became much more that whereas initially it was when's my time to to you know to blow of course and and uh less so the the older that we got more so uh doing it for the song in the writing in the performance the other side of it is that and we know this from hindsight and reading some of the interviews in the book Tom kind of made Mike Campbell the guy in can in charge of the archive so you know we're gonna do a live record and we have six nights of material that we have to sit and listen to to pull out the ones that we think might make it on Tom's like yeah man I ain't coming and sitting for all that send Mike Mike will do it right and Mike would go and do it and then Tom would come in and after they pared it down yeah um and so you know that's also one of the things that I am kind of the guy. Yeah right I I've owned the studio for the last 10 or 12 years 15 years that we've used way more technical like from the so I have the the the songs I have the songs that haven't been released you know uh the recordings I'm sitting on that archive and more technical so I'm the guy that's gonna pull it up and and um so uh the it changed you know um and then our struggles with band members which is spinal tap level uh there's the spinal tap one is the drummer he he's the one that you know consistently leaves the band ours is the bass player uh led to to so many acoustic duo gigs which is a a completely different animal the song selection is different you know the vibe is different the focus is different uh and allowed Zach and I to we put a live record out um called Live in Belgium which is acoustic duo just the two of us and I love that record you know yeah what do you do you enjoy doing the like you and Zach doing the the the duo the acoustic duo thing or is that if you had your preference I'm sure it would be all band right I I mean I love the band you know uh that's where I that's who I am yeah and we do that a lot less so of course there's yeah that makes sense you know there's this this fondness for something you don't have enough of yeah um I will say that and this is one of the big reasons why we moved uh to Europe we played acoustic duo gigs in Europe and they're completely different at least back then than than here uh and I enjoy that

SPEAKER_05 1:28:07

Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute because I I preface what I'm gonna say by saying that I'm I'm a professional musician in the sense that I get paid to do what I do, but I'm not a professional musician in the sense that I'm trying to make a living playing music, shows. I'm not recording records, um, I don't do any of that, right? But there's a difference in going into a room these days, whether and granted it's a restaurant, it's a microbrewery, it's wherever. You take that same duo and you go drop it in ProASART or somewhere in Europe, and people actually shut up and listen over there. What what is the what do you think the difference is in the European culture? Is it a respect thing? Is it that they really love the music? Is it a combination of both? But what what makes the people in the United States let's just call it, I wouldn't call it disrespectful because they have the right to talk, you know, while they're having dinner and stuff. Like we're not they're not there so much to see us, but it's it's an interesting dynamic that I hear the non-listening here, the non-paying attention, and then you go to Europe and it's a completely different audience there. What do you think the difference is?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:32

Well, that is the difference uh as far as why it's that way. Um part of it I think is because they're beautifully so, they are several years behind what we're doing as far as pop culture. Because it's primarily coming from here, right? Um and you're starting to see less of it over there.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:11

Oh, okay. So you think it's going away.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:14

I think in in certain places, certainly in places that that we have played in the past, it's a little less uh forgiving as far as people listening. So I think that's part of it. Um but I also think that over here it's technology has made music a commodity. And you can get it anywhere. Yeah, you can get it everywhere, it's in your pocket, right? In the 80s, and it's not that long ago, 80s and 90s, you had to go see it out there.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:52

You bought a ticket and you went.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:54

Yeah, other than MTV, which was the same pre-packaged video every time, you couldn't see every show that your favorite band is doing live in your pocket because some jackass is sitting out there holding his phone up. So every show is getting recorded. Why bother going out and see it? And then if you do go out and see it, you're in a place primarily, there's still great places. You and I just played one uh up in Magnolia, you know, Deep Roots, that's clearly cares about the musician. Yeah. There's certain things that are set up and established that make that a place that musicians want to go play. So many other places, it's an afterthought.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:44

That's an afterthought, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:45

And I call them corner gigs because you show up and you set up and you're in a corner, yeah, because there's no infrastructure for an actual band. Sure. And I'm always left with the feeling of like, look, man, the hundred bucks that I'm gonna make is is appreciated, but why are we here?

SPEAKER_05 1:32:03

Yeah. Well, and the fact that, you know, would you would you also say the fact that you go into some of these places and they hire a musician but still want to run all the TVs and it's like make up your mind. Do you want do you want the TVs on uh or do you want like music? Because if I'm if I'm coming to see, let's say, for example, you and Zach are playing down at Louie's or whatever, right? I don't want to see the fucking TVs. Turn those bitches off, pull the plugs out. I came to see music. I came to hear a three and a half minute story, right, be told through a microphone and a guitar, right? That's what I want to hear. But some people, it's funny because you'll sit there at some of your shows and people are just like like enamored with like, oh, the just watching something on TV with no volume, and it's like, good God almighty. So you left home to come here to do the same thing that you could have done there. Like, like that's kind of it, it kind of like makes me wonder. And and I think it probably bothered me a lot more nine years ago. Now I give I don't give two shits one way or another. I go in and I do my job and I leave at the end of the day. But it's it's an interesting time. The the attention span is not there. Look where we've gone with reels, right? Like I see people post a seven-second video, and I'm like, where's the rest of it? Like, I like you, you you gave me just enough to catch my attention, and I wanted to hear the whole song. Like, give me this the whole three and a half minute song if you're gonna post it on your Facebook page. Ten seconds just pisses me off at the end of the day. So it's a different time.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:56

Yeah, I don't even know what that is.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:57

Yeah, of course you don't. I know I'm talking a different language to you right now, but I because Vern is not the social media guy for sure, right? And I I only am because I probably have the same hate towards it that you do, but it's a love-hate thing. I have to do it for my podcast to be relative. For the music, I would say I do it more for the venue that I play, to say, hey, come see us at this venue, Creekwood Grill, Backyard Grill, Lone Pine, Deep Roots, like you, Jackies, what wherever, right? I do that more as, hey, I feel like I I owe you this in return to try to move people in to come see us play, right? But I mean, if if I didn't have the podcast, I'd I'd probably dip off of uh the whole social media thing. Because with the algorithm, you you have you know 13,000, 14,000 followers. I mean, how many people are really seeing this shit with the algorithm? A handful? Yeah I mean, I don't know. It's it, but it's like pushing a rope uphill. It's it's it's almost a joke, but everybody is in that social media rat race these days, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:09

It's it's you know, I I can watch your show or listen to it without having access to any of that because you provide a site where I can do that. The website. What I can't do is know exactly when an episode strikes. Of course. Because I'm not part of that. Sure. So it becomes my job to go and seek it out. What's new, you know, how many have I missed? Yeah. But isn't that the way it's kind of supposed to be? Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't want to see advertisements for stuff that I don't want to see.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:49

Of course. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:50

And if I really like something like your show, I'm gonna go do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:54

Yes. Well, they say, like when you start podcasting, that you should you should get on a schedule. And my schedule, even though I miss it sometimes because life happens and I I do have a full-time job, but is to get on a schedule so people know that every other Wednesday at 7 a.m., Backstage Pass Radio will drop something, right? Whether it's a bonus episode or a or a local or regional artist or whatever, but sometimes I get a little off base there. So you you could know, as somebody that has listened to multiple episodes, that okay, Randy, I just know if if he doesn't drop anything this Wednesday, there's something probably coming next Wednesday. Like you kind of know, right? Um, but speaking of my show, you know, I there there's been quite a bit of very appreciated involvement from you with the show over the last year or so specifically. And um, you know, you've you've bailed me out,

Lead Guitar Ego To Song First

SPEAKER_05 1:37:00

you've bailed me out of a few things, man, that that that it's these mystery episodes that they sound good when you're doing them. And then when you get into post and you start digging into them, you're like, where is all that racket coming from? Like, and it's just like for somebody that just knows enough to I I I've never professed to be an audio engineer because I'm not, but I've done well enough to give the listeners something good to listen to, right? Is it something that you know you or Mutt Lang or somebody like that would produce? Absolutely not, but it's always been, I've always checked the box, but you know, you you've bailed me out of some jams, and I think some some of them have probably given you a little bit of a headache too, right? Because we just don't know what we don't know sometimes, right? Because there's multiple technologies involved, and it can be any of those technologies at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:59

There's a ghost in the machine, but you don't know what machine exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:03

Is it this one? Is it that one? Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:06

And it's it's so random. Yeah, it's like, why is that one perfect? Exactly. Same connections, exactly, same setup, and this one is just unbearable.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:19

Yeah, you know, yeah. And that's the interesting thing because when I was doing the Brad Gillis interview, it's I mean, if you look at the video, the Zoom video, it was all like it sounded great. I I mean, I'll I'll post that pretty much just as it is. Probably add a little, you know, bottom end or something to the audio to make it sound good, but no, no manipulation, right? But then you go and you listen to what came off the the the device here, right? I don't want to, I don't want to badmouth you know, this thing because it's it's been an amazing device for me, but it's like, okay, where did all of that racket come? I didn't even hear that when I was talking to him, right? But then you get it post and you're like, Jesus Christ. So yeah, it's it's bizarre. It's bizarre sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:06

It's um, you know, it's technology, and ultimately guys like you and and me that care, that hate it when that happens, yes, that don't want to put something out unless it's absolutely the best it it can possibly be, that don't have two or three million dollars to you know invest into it. In my opinion, and and this is a topic that I hold a very strong opinion on, uh we're like we need to be uh uh shielded and triumphed, and there needs to be more of us because certainly with musical things people are becoming used to hearing what I consider to be okay sonics. And that's not good enough, right? No, when when and you know this from back in the day, man. Hi-fi stereo systems, audiophile listeners, you know, and it w it didn't even have to be a hi-fi stereo system, but those records hit differently, yeah, not because they were on vinyl, that has very little to do with it from a technical standpoint. It is another layer of analog you know uh production, but it wasn't that because when they came out on 8-track, they sounded pretty goddamn good. Yeah, it was how they were recorded, yeah, where they were recorded. And you're seeing now, you know, so-and-so made a record in his bedroom for less than ten thousand dollars because he has a laptop and some software. Yeah, okay, great. It is always the material, it's always about the songs, and if the songs are great, you know, it it won't really matter, but it does matter because no the big guys, you know, the the U2s and the Stones, the Adells, uh the Taylor Swifts, the Foo Fighters, they're not doing it in their bedroom.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:36

No. And they're spending money to make money, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:40

Well, because those records sound like a million bucks. Yeah, of course. And that's the way they should sound, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:50

Well, you know, I guess some would say, Randy, man, you get too wrapped around the wheels with, you know, like or around the spokes with, you know, you're going in, you're gonna edit this, and you just pick it apart, you drive yourself crazy, and then when I've driven myself crazy enough, I call on you and say, Vern, dude, we gotta do I need, I I need you, right? But I read a lot early on with the podcast, and one of the things that I took away from that is they said, you can have the best guest on the planet on your show, okay? You can have Adele or you can have whoever, right? But if your audio sucks on a podcast, listeners won't fucking listen to you. Or you can have mediocre guests and have awesome, awesome sound and audio, and people will come back time after time and listen because it's aesthetically pleasing to their ears. When we when we think I'm gonna listen to something like in a car or in a studio like we're in, we have a certain level of expectation of what the quality is gonna be like, right? Now, if we're listening to it through an iPhone speaker, we don't expect, you know, uh, you know, great things out of that. We we take it at face value, but that's why I've always been anal about the show and making it sound the absolute best I can for the equipment that that I do run through. And and and I'll say my my equipment is not cheap by any means. Now, is it is it a million-dollar you know studio in Nashville or wherever? No, it's absolutely not, but um just taking the pride in that is you know it's that's why I ship it off to you, right? Because I want it, I don't want people to hear the you know, and all the crap that that's in there. Like I just don't want to hear that.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:55

No, I don't want to hear it as a listener either. No, you know. Um, I consume most of my uh my literature, for lack of a better word, through audiobooks nowadays. Okay. I've been doing it for a long time just because I don't have the time to sit and read. Yeah, but I've been reading almost my entire life.

Why European Crowds Actually Listen

SPEAKER_01 1:44:20

I think I started when I was like three. Uh and I I loved it growing up, and I still love it, you know. I just don't have the time. So it's a lot of audiobooks, and I've actually done audio posts, so I've edited and produced audiobooks. Okay. Um my during my vacation, I did a lot of um cartoons, uh animation in New York as the engineer. So recording, you know, English actors dubbing it into English. Uh and I know how Audible works because I've done audiobooks from the the technician side, but I know how the engineers get paid, and I know how drastically that has changed, and I can hear it in the product. Sure. That the corners that have been cut and I gotta tell you, it there's audiobooks that I cannot finish. Sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:25

I literally can't finish them because it's just it's like nails on a chalkboard, huh?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:30

Yeah, you know, one hundred. It's just so and sometimes it's funny. The editor misses uh a cue, so the guy says the line twice because he did two takes, yeah, and they didn't catch it and uh take one out. That's funny. But when you hear words getting cut off, or there's this weird echo, or you hear a truck go by, I'm totally taken out of the content of the audiobook. Yeah, and it's not that hard, man.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:58

Yeah, for sure. Well, especially if it's a product that somebody's paying to hear anyway, right? On the biggest site for that product. Exactly. Well, I think I think you were on, let's see. I think you were on with me for the Holly Knight interview, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:18

I I was lurking.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:19

Yeah, you were lurking on that one. And um, but how cool was how cool was Holly Knight? I mean, like she's like uh awesome. Man, just some of the song like I've had maybe not so much with Holly, because I um I I kind of expected that, but I think she was a close second, but the first one that I did was Russ Ballard, and Russ was the lead singer of the band Argent, right? Hold your head up, and a lot of people have heard that song. His own stuff, yeah. Yeah, his own stuff for sure, which there's a ton of that. And um, and as I got to talking to him, he was he was saying, Yeah, man, I wrote this song, and you know, Santana made a big head out of it. And he's like, I was going through this time in my life, and blah, blah, blah. And he's and he starts kind of, he's not singing it, but he's like, I had a dream and it turned to dust. What a thought was love. And and literally, I'm I'm sitting like this in in my um, while he's telling me this, I had a dream and it turned to dust. And I'm like, hold on, dude. I said, I just had a whole schoolgirl moment. Like, like, I said, you like I don't know what what it is, like, like all of this has just come together for me all of a sudden, like a hundred episodes into this podcast. That you you've written the storyboard to my musical life, right? You can do magic by America. God gave rock and roll to you by kiss. Uh, you know, like the these songs winning, winning by back in the New York groove that many recorded, but Ace made it. Ace Fraley probably did the best rendition of it. And and I'm like, I'm talking to the dude, right? I'm talking to the dude. Yeah, right. And Holly was kind of the same when you think about you know, you think of Patty Smythe and scandal, shooting down the walls of Holly. We've all heard The Warrior. That's Holly Knight, right? And it's like, Jesus Christ, this girl is yeah, has written stuff for Rod Stewart, all the hits like not all, but Tina Turner, huge hits for Tina, right? And I'm like, holy shit, man, what a I know what what a what a 10,000-ton presence from a songwriter perspective, right? And I don't remember the whole interview, but I but I I'm sure I said something to her like, how many times have people sung these songs thinking, oh yeah, that's Patty Smythe and Scandal, not even knowing your name, right? And I think she said on that interview that all of the songs that she has written are tied to her on Spotify. And she said last year she had over 2.4 billion with a B streams for the songs that she had written for other artists. And I'm like, what the fuck, dude? Yeah. It really put it in perspective, like her contributions to songwriting and to the songs that are just on the storyboards of our lives these days, even to this day, right? You're simply the best. How many times have you heard that song? That song must have been streamed 400 million times by itself, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:49:58

And in ten commercials.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:00

You know.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:00

Unbelievable. The mailbox money, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:03

Well, there's that. Yeah. You know, I and I had finished her book right before the warrior.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:10

Yeah. Or I am the warrior. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:12

Audiobook. She reads it, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:15

You know.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:16

Um, but I remember, and I am guilty of this. I will admit on air, Randy, that I am guilty of telling you every time you tell me of someone new that that's the biggest that's the biggest guess you've ever had. Whether or not it's true. I she was the first one that I said that about. You know, I was like, holy shit, that's huge. And you just let me lurk on it, and one of the things I loved about her book that she got into in that show was she didn't start with this idea of being a songwriter.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:58

Right? She was in a band.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:00

She was gonna make it as a rock star.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:02

New York City, spider, right? Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:05

Whereas if you go back and and read the books about Carol King, she was at the Brill Building. She was in the room churning out songs as as product for other artists. And somehow somebody said, Why don't you sing these songs? And you know, we'll make this record called Tapestry. That right. But she was doing the the workaday songwriter. Yeah. And I love the fact that you know Holly was like, No, man, I was in a band with a bunch of dudes. I was gonna be a rock star.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:43

And and uh and then realized that I had this gift thing, right? This gift for for these songs. But yeah, like you said, it's she's listing them off, and it's like, oh my god, man. You wait, you wrote that one too? And and I pride myself, so I I told Zach I had this idea like uh 15 years ago, 20 years ago. I said, we should do Who Wrote It dot com. And we'll take songs that everybody knows, but they have no idea because to this day, and I'm a I'm a geek, man. I'm a dork when it comes to that shit. I am too. And I still, still to this day, every so often find out something like so-and-so wrote this song, and I'm like, You kidding me?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:34

Yeah, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:36

So I thought, yeah, we'll do that just because that would be cool. You know, some people um uh who okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:44

That's a that's a whole great podcast episode in and of itself, though, if you think about it, right? Yeah. I mean, that's one that you and I could do and just kind of bounce things. Hey, you remember this song? Yeah, who who do you think that was?

SPEAKER_01 1:52:56

Nicolette Larson. Remember her? Yeah, of course. What was her big hit? Um smash hit. Really her only super smash hit in like '76. I don't remember. It's gonna take a lot of love, right?

unknown 1:53:12

God damn it, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:13

You know what it's gonna take a lot of, right? Yeah, wrote it.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:18

No, Neil Young.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:20

No way, no way, I had no idea. Yeah. Yeah. So she gave the song a face, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:53:27

I mean, she made it hers, right? But she didn't write it. Neil Young wrote it. And it didn't. When you learn that, and then you kind of think of Neil sitting there with an acoustic with that nasal high voice, you could go, yeah, I could see him writing that.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:43

Yeah, of course. Well, think about think about uh Islands in the stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, the Bee Gees right. Yeah, a lot of people would never know that, right? The Bee Gees. And most people probably would never care, right? But idiots like you and I, of course, is like really it's like, wow, that's cool, you know, because we're we're we geek out over kind of stuff like that. And it's the whole liner, it goes back to the whole liner notes conversation, right? Yeah, well, so Holly was certainly cool, and then um, let's see, you so I think the first one you co-hosted, or maybe it's the only one, you you educate me like my times run together, my brain is not what it used to be, but you co-hosted the one we did with Doug Penick of Kings X.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:33

So I my the first co-host that I did was Bumblefoot with you. That's right, that's right. And then sure enough, sure enough.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:40

Okay, yeah, Bumblefoot from Sons of Anarchy and um GNR, yeah, Guns N' Roses. And uh he's played with everybody, one of the probably one of the the best talents on the planet, right? That guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:55

I mean, uh unique, builds his own guitars and yeah, yeah. Fretless with a thimble. I mean, wicked shit. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:05

Well, what it so if if we go back to to the Doug interview, what what did you think of that

Podcast Audio Standards And Cutting Corners

SPEAKER_05 1:55:10

experience? Because I know you're you know, first and foremost, you're a huge fan of King's X. Like how how was that experience for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:55:20

So I I've met a lot of of um I I don't even really know what the right word is, right? They're not heroes. Um I've met a lot of successful musicians and and rock stars and that I admire, you know. Um and some of them I've met in a forced environment like a record signing, and others I've met um through somebody, and I got to actually spend a little bit of time talking to them. And I enjoy that stuff tremendously. I'm not starstruck, but I enjoy it because it's like, hey, look, man, these people are different. You know, this isn't meeting uh another guitar player who hasn't made it. These people have, and they're different, they've lived a different life. So I love to interact with that kind of stuff. And King's X is a weird animal because they're every musician's favorite band, because they're so good and they're so different, right? Drop D, heavy riffs, distortion, and three-part beetle harmonies. And every musician that hears them is just like, why aren't these guys the biggest band in the world? I mean, Niall Rogers actually said those words. So, and they've been a huge, huge uh favorite of mine for years. So you hold my beer, Randy, over there.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:57

I was gonna say, uh uh when when um you said, man, like you said, man, you've really got some, you've had some cool guests on the show, man. But if you want to impress me, you got to get Doug Pennock on. If you get Doug Pennock on your show, man, and I I was gonna say, what did I say to you? I said, hold my fucking beard.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:21

And and so it that one was interesting. So the Bumblefoot one, you know, I I put some work into beforehand. Uh I was familiar with him completely, but wanted to make sure I had the dates right and stuff and did approach it a little bit more like a a gig. Uh with Doug, I didn't have to do any research.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:43

Of course, no, it's all off the dome, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:57:45

And I found myself sitting right here, my my brain split in two, and half of my brain was going, say something. And the other the other half of my brain was listening to this podcast as a fan. Yeah, it's going, man, I love this. This is so cool. And then, like, oh shit, wait, I'm on it. I'm here. Let me pinch myself. Yeah, man. So towards the end, it picks up a little bit, but there's this big gap where I say nothing because I'm just so into hearing what he has to say. Of course. Um, and I find him to be a really unique um person, yeah, as well.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:26

Right. He was a super sweet guy, you know, like you you never know what to, you never know what you're gonna get from people and how they might come across and all the things, but I mean, damn, I think we almost went two hours with him, right? Like, and it was just gracious as hell with his time. His stories were cool, he was super uber cool, like all the things. And yeah, it was a it was a it was a cool interview. And I wanted to shout out to um my buddy little Billman, um, who helped me with with that. He and uh Doug share a place up in um in LA, right? And uh little Billman's played with Jelly Roll and he played with uh he's he's done several things with John Fogarty from CCR and uh uh uh little Billman's been on my show a couple of times. And when you mention, you know, man, if you if you get Doug on the show, I knew I already had an ace in my pocket, right? I said, All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this card. I'm gonna call little Billman and say, dude, I I I need to impress Vern. I said, can you get can you help me? And then like 20 minutes later, I'm getting a text message from Doug, and I'm like, fuck yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:47

You know, screenshots of that text. Yeah, I was like, thanks, dude.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:52

I appreciate that, man. That was super cool. So thanks to Lil Billman for that. Uh cool, cool dude. You know, he played in uh uh Grindr Blues, him and his brother and Doug were in a band called Grindr Blues together. And I'm not sure if that's still going on right now. I haven't talked to Lil Billman in a little in a while, but um yeah, they've uh they've got some good music too. Three-piece, kind of a powerhouse, kind of much like Kings X, the whole three-piece thing. And uh it's uh it's it's cool. They for the listeners out there, they have a song called uh Who Wants a Spankin'? And on the surface, you might and and this is what the show is all about because I love the stories behind the songs, right? And I tell the story often of uh my friend Kyle Hutton, who came on the show, and he's a country artist here, has recorded with Radney Foster and some big names, and uh has a uber successful um podcast called Real Life Real Music. And um I remember he was telling me that he wrote a song, I think it was with Radney, and um it was called Three Bottles, three more bottles, and she's gone. And on the surface, you think, oh boy, you know, another country song about drinking, you know, it's like how shallow is this, right? But the backstory is that he and his wife are foster parents, and they had made, they had a baby that they were fostering. They had three bottles that were made for the baby in the refrigerator, and they knew that after those three bottles were gone, the mother was gonna come get that baby from them.

unknown 2:01:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:39

And it just takes you like it, it you listen to the song that's heavy completely different, right? Than oh boy, another drinking song. But now you know it's a foster about a foster baby, right? And and it is, right? And so this this song, Who Wants a Spankin', sounds sexual, of course, but it's about um, you know, one one of them was having a problem with their kids, jumping on the bed and pissing them off, and he yells out, Who Wants a Spankin'? You know, like so when you listen to the song, you listen to it completely different than he's talking about whipping his kids' ass versus like something of sexual, you know. So, so you I I love those stories uh behind the songs because I I think songs are in are supposed to be interpreted by the listener to paint your own canvas to use the songs. That's what the artists want is you to use the songs how you see how they fit for you. And a lot of times they don't even like divulging what the songs are really about because they just want you to paint your own canvas with them, right? It's it's the artistic piece behind a musician. But I love asking those questions because it goes back to the liner note shit. I'm just that guy. I want to know why and how. And then you listen to them completely different. And I love that about the songs. For me, that's you know, I get off to that, right? Some people don't care about all of that shit, but I I just love all the backstories behind the music, the songs. Where were you? What were you thinking when you wrote, I had a dream, but it turned, you know, like where were you in your life, you know, and that's just cool to me.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:28

Absolutely. Or even if it's a song that you kind of know what the backstory is, or you know what the general thing is about, but they've they've discovered, they've created this, you know, image, a turn of phrase, a group of words to describe the same thing. It's a broken heart, right? Yep, but they have phrased it in such a way that's just unbelievable that you've never heard before. Yeah. Things like that, you know. And it's just like, how the hell did you do that?

SPEAKER_05 2:04:05

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's mind-boggling. And then it's something that just kind of stands the test of time, like the song Simply the Best. Like, who I bet you Holly never thought when she wrote that that that song would ever be that big.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:23

She knew it was a good song.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:25

Of course she did. But you never know how it's gonna hit, right? Right? You just never know how it's gonna hit. Well, I mentioned earlier that um you know, you've played quite a few shows with me over time. Um you filled a big spot when when Chris took his sabbatical and stepped away from the live show. So I uh I really um appreciate you jumping in there. And I've had a great time. Yeah, man, I've had a great time. Like I'm like, man, I hope, I hope that it's you know, I'm hope that I'm always to hope that I was good enough for Chris, you know, just to, you know, do what we do. And then, you know, you being a touring guy and you're playing with Zach. Like, I mean, Zach's on another level in and of himself. It's like, why why why would this guy really want to do that? But I I think we we do we sound pretty good together, and I enjoy I enjoy the shows with you too.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:20

Yeah, me too. Um I I enjoy those times and they're rare, but you know, when it is different, it it's really good for you as a musician, sure. But also it's it's different, right? And that's fun because it's it's not something you're used to. They're different songs, you know. You for reasons that still remain unknown to the universe, tune down half a step.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:54

Um just say what you're gonna say, you know, like don't beat her around the bush.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:59

You know, so I get to pull out one of my many guitars that I don't typically play because I have to have one now that sits in that tuning.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:07

Well, now uh hold on just a second here, because there was a time, I distinctly remember a time, and I said earlier, my brain's kind of shit these days, and I forget a lot of things, but there was a time when Zach was tuning down a half step two.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:22

We did.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:23

What was that all about?

SPEAKER_01 2:06:25

Uh I think it was probably initiated for vocals, I think.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:34

That's why I uh did it, because there were a few notes and some of a lot of the songs that I did that might have been just on the verge. And I said, Man, if I just had that half step, I could probably reach them, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:06:46

Because I think he was writing melodies, you know, yeah that were um and we did I know we did one record that was completely tuned down a half step, maybe two, but I think we decided through the middle of the second that this we weren't gonna do that. Yeah, and we came back up. Um I was just as annoyed then, just so you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:15

Well, what so what is it about it that is it because you've learned the fretboard and the fret markers on the fretboard, and then all of a sudden you're doing well, I guess that really doesn't change where you're where you're playing if you're both tuned down. What what annoys you about the tuning down of the instrument? Um and you're far more technical with this than I am.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:39

I believe, and it depends on the guitar, the the make, right? But I believe you have to have a guitar, and that's it. It's set there, it lives in that tuning.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:51

And never changes from that tuning, it lives in that tuning because it it changes the intonation and the setup and like it.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:59

A guitar like a strat with with the floating bridge, you can't even drop D live. The whole

Songwriter Credits And Dream Guests

SPEAKER_01 2:08:10

guitar goes out of tune. Oh wow, unless Paul, you can do it because you have the fixed bridge. Yeah, you can drop D, we do it all the time, and play that same guitar. So I believe, and I'm a you know, I was a guitar tech. If I have a guitar that's tuned to open G, it never changes. It stays in OpenG for the rest of time because now it lives in that tuning, right? So when you tune down a half step, that's the first thing. You have to have the gear to be able to do it and leave it there. The second thing is that I play in open tunings a lot. Um not as much as standard, but there's a lot of songs that that we have done where I have a guitar, you know, my part is in an open tune guitar. So and they're different. There's an open, there's a five-string open G, there's one where I call it drop G, where I just drop the A string to a G and uh leave everything else where it is. There's a a six-string open G where I leave the low string at E because it makes for this great E minor chord. Um there's open E that I have. We did one song on uh Vultures that's an open E minor. So I I have those, and what ends up happening is your brain has to stay sharp because my C is no longer where C is, depending on the tuning. And I have to remember what tuning I'm in. And you know when you drop down a half step now you're like flat or C right? But the thing when when we did it in the band that I struggled with the most and it was really interesting, were harmony vocals. So I'm not I would never tell anybody that I'm a great background singer. Unless I know the part note for note. And some of them I've written for stuff that I came up with it, right? But I know it. I can't find it live. I can't just start, you know, and I love people that can do that. Uh it it's it's like alchemy to me. Because I can't. So when I have the part and now we've gone down a half step, I can't hear it. I know the part, the part is here, the part's not here. Yeah, okay. It's not natural for me for my voice to just do that. So I was struggling with that, and then I w found out that you know, I guess the my brain has lived in standard tuning since I was a kid. So long, yeah. That I that's what I hear, even though that's not it.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:42

Yeah, no, that makes total sense.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:44

Um but if that's what where we needed to be, that's where we needed to be. I mean the early Van Halen did it, Stevie Ray did it, Jimi Hendrix did it. So but thankfully for me, he came back in standard.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:00

Well probably a year and a half ago I uh had a hemorrhaging vocal cord and it it probably came more important that half step because I lost a lot of range. And I'm just now a year and a half I think it was 20 October, November of 24. So two a year and a half. So yeah, a year and a half. And I'm just now in one song that I think about specifically is Take It Easy by the Eagles. When I do that, um I I'm just now able to pull those notes off again a year and a half later. It has taken my voice that long to get back to that range. And that's, I mean, by all standards, that's not I'm not a I'm not a tenor voice, right? I'm more of a baritone type of voice, but um, those are high notes for me to hit. So um I'm glad that I finally got back to those. Maybe, maybe I can get back to the the standard tuning at some point in time, just so I don't piss everybody off.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:14

But I mean as people age, you know, and major touring acts will they'll bring everything down because they just can't get up there anymore and they want to play the songs. And then there's a couple that refuse to do it to the detriment of all of us because it's like you know, yeah, David Lee Roth is one of them. He's out there touring. Yeah, and it's like, Dave, dude, tune down, brother.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:41

Yeah, no, for sure. But then there's there's some of those that I believe um because I've asked them, they've they said, I haven't lost any range. Like um, and two, I can think of Johnny Gioelli um sang in hardline with Neil Sean, right? Still has that amazing range, and Graham Bonnet still sings in the same key in a lot of his songs, right? But but they're Paul Rogers, there's yeah, they're just they're the anomaly, right? Or they're the exception to the rule, some of these guys are. But you know, we um I guess we were out at Deep Roots Vineyards, um, got booked out there. We just played our uh our first show out at Deep Roots a couple two or three weeks ago, something like that. Super cool place, like you mentioned earlier. Like you could tell that it was like well thought out from a musician perspective, and the owner is a musician himself, so you can tell it it's it's represented in the place, the stage, the light, having two air conditioning units on stage. Like, who does that? Who does that, right? Because he wants to make it, you know, just right for he wants the musician and you can tell the the patrons of the place to talk about his place when you come back. I mean, a green room. I've never been in a green room in my fucking life, right? That was the first time it's like, wait, what? There's a air, it's an air conditioning green room with a with a refrigerator full of whatever drinks you want. What the hell? Did that then die and go to heaven? What what happened here?

SPEAKER_01 2:15:25

It's common sense though, right? Right. The musicians feel good, the show's better. Yeah, no, I think the show's better, the crowd enjoys it more. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:34

Yeah, no, totally, totally. And you know, we played that one, and I think it was actually the last show um that we had booked before Chris came back full, you know, from sabbatical.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:50

He no, he was back.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:51

He was back, but but we we had I booked that one with you because you were with me when when I talked to uh the owner of the place. Yeah, and um we played that show, and uh like the next day I got a call from them saying, Hey, we loved you guys. The staff loved you guys, and we got great feedback, and and so we're we're booked for more. And I was talking to Chris last night. I said, Yeah, you know, I'm gonna be playing Deep Roots with Vern again in September. And I have to, I said I have to honor that with him because he and I were tied to that one. He's like, absolutely, you know, that you should play that with him. And um I think the first one we played was a Sunday, and Chris really doesn't like playing on Sundays, but I think the next one we have coming up is a Saturday, right? So yeah, um, so yeah, I look forward to that one. So we still have that one on the books, and then anything else that um that comes out of there, and we'll see if that wedding reception makes too. You know, we'll we'll see what happens there. But um I wanted to switch gears on you real quick and and go kind of we we've kind of beat the music up a little bit, but switch gears and and speak a little bit about the martial arts if if if that's cool with you. Absolutely. Yeah. So um Crov Maga, right? Uh how long have you been a practitioner of this art?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:20

Five years.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:21

Five years. Okay. What was there something before Crov or was it just is that just kind of where you started?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:27

Uh there was nothing before it, um other than I'd always been interested in doing something of that nature. I didn't know what. Sure. Uh and I never did, yeah, because I was, you know playing music and married and all that kind of stuff. So um I got back, I moved back from Europe in a in a state, you could say. Yeah. Um, you know, financially broke. Uh my marriage was ending, and I didn't have anywhere to live. I was living with my mom and I was 47, and I said, now's a good time. You know, now's a good time. Because I need something. Yeah. I gotta do something. Yeah. And I I I was up, you know, I had been a uh a fight fan, I had been a combat sports fan for for quite a while. So I was up on the the different techniques, the different martial arts. But I figured at 47 I'm not gonna compete. I should probably do the one that's most applicable to if there's a problem. Yeah. The most legitimately uh, you know, verifiably one that may work. And so I had known what Krav was, um, but I did some research to see if there was something that I was missing or something new that I hadn't heard about. And pretty much everything came back to, you know, as a civilian. This is the one. Yeah. So I found a place, and at the time I did not know that the place that I was about to go to was uh what it is. I just thought it's close and it's craft. So uh I started taking it at at Crab Maga Houston. Um and yeah, I've been doing it for five years.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:41

I guess that that art is more of a defensive art than it is an offensive art, is is am I spot on kind of there?

SPEAKER_01 2:19:50

Yes and no. Okay. Um so it's it's self-defense, um, and it was created for self-defense. So interesting story,

Co-Hosting Doug Pinnick As A Superfan

SPEAKER_01 2:20:00

the backstory is in modern the modern understanding of what mixed martial arts is, this was pretty much the first actual mixed martial art. Bruce Lee gets credit for developing Jeet Kune, which was his in the 60s. Uh taking the best parts, the the footwork of fencing, the striking of boxing and wing chung, the you know, the working parts of of these multiple disciplines and combining it. Umie Lichtenfeld, who was the the creator of Krav Maga in 1948, had already done that. Nobody knew what it was in 1965 because it was for the Israeli military strict.

SPEAKER_05 2:20:47

Wasn't he a boxer or something like that? A street fighter or something? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:52

He was a street fighter in Hungary.

SPEAKER_05 2:20:55

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:56

Well, okay, he came from Hungary originally. Oh, okay, I got you. Because in 48, Israel was about you know six days old. Oh, okay. Um, and like not that much different from today, when they when the European Jews got to Israel, everybody wanted them to go away. Yeah. So he took the best parts of boxing, street fighting, which is insanely violent, you know, and created this thing, the sole purpose of which was to have people stay alive. Um so it is self-defense. However, the the philosophy behind it is that when it's time to use it, somebody else has made that decision for you because there's a threat, and it the threat is uh you know coming to you or on you, and so therefore you must fill the space between you and that threat with violence. So the combatives tend to be quite offensive in a defensive context.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:20

No, that makes sense totally.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:22

Um and it's you like you find out when you when you get into something deeply. Um and and I did want to to make sure that I mentioned this. So if you go on the internet, there's there's two camps that you'll find in the in the chat rooms and stuff. And there was some fracture that went on within the community years and years ago where so-and-so said things need to be done this way, and and another guy, you know, so there was Krav Maga worldwide and Krav Maga International or whatever. Uh on the internet, there's people that basically chalk it up to what they call bullshito, which is you know gimmick shit, yeah, doesn't work. Okay, yeah. Chuck Norris, you know, yeah, horseshit.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:15

And then there's Steven Sagell, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:17

Right. And and bullshito is real. There are places out there, you know, not crave-centric, but just any kind of martial arts that are really bad.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:27

And then there are the people that have taken it, and it boils down to the caliber of the training cadre. There are crave schools out there because there's no sanctioning group anymore. You can hang up a sh uh a sign that says Krav Maga and teach it. And the practitioners, the students, they don't know any different. Yeah. Right? And it could be that you're really not good at it. Then there's the group that that I ended up with where the training cadre is just incredible. And the the history of the techniques, the way they teach them is really important, and they've actually become very well known in the community as being a a legitimate trainer place. Yeah. Because they take it so seriously, and they put their trainers through, you know, ridiculous testing to be able to continue to elevate. LA is like that, but Houston is is very well known for their training. They're trainers. So um you know, that was that went a long way towards making me continue to want to do it. But it's funny, I was 47. I'm not really athletically uh gifted. And for the first six months that I was going, I continued and I went a lot, you know. I was doing two two a day, although they were at the evening, like four days a week. And I was like, man, I made a mistake. I should not be doing this. Yeah, you know. But I kept going back. And I don't know, I don't know why. Uh and then something clicked, and I was like, Yeah, I uh okay, right? Uh continuously injured, and you know, I'm I'm not in my 30s anymore, and I'm a man, so you know, I I come back from an injury and I start 100 miles an hour where I left off, which is a terrible idea. Yeah. Um usually. Yeah. Yeah. But um I find it to be I I find it to be effective, number one. I also find the training to be so good that it it carries with you in in a non-physical way. Yeah. Right. So the big thing that nobody talks about that isn't really highlighted is it's constantly drilled into you that if you use any of this stuff, everything else has gone unbelievably wrong.

SPEAKER_05 2:26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:22

You're not supposed to ever use it.

SPEAKER_05 2:26:24

You're supposed to duck and run, right? Or leave.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:27

De-escalation, leaving, of course, running away. Yeah. All of the whole goal is to go home. Yeah. And if you actually now are using the techniques, everything else is going to shit.

unknown 2:26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:26:40

That's not that's the That's not the ideal situation to be in.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:45

And it's not what the uh the other martial arts want you to know. Yeah. They're like, we can teach you how to get it. This is like, dude, de-escalate. Of course. The whole goal is to be okay. Yeah. It's only when you have no choice left.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:03

Yeah. Wasn't um, I'm trying to remember back. Wasn't um Mirko Krokop, wasn't he a Krav Maga guy, uh, Krav Maga guy too? I think he was. Like I'd have to, I'd have to look, look at that. I wish I had a producer like Joe Rogan where they just kind of look it up on the flight. Hey, yeah, Jimmy, look it up over there, like, like, you know. And I don't want to sit here and Google anything, but it seems like he was part of Krav Maga. That's interesting. Maybe, maybe not. And it doesn't even matter. But his his name came to mind when you were telling the whole Krav Maga story.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:43

It is interesting if he was, only because, you know, our techniques are not nice. Yeah. They're and they're not supposed to be. Sure. But when you're in a sport with rules and a referee and and judges, um the fundamentals of Krav are are very appropriate, but uh a lot of the stuff, you know, you can't do it. It's just too violent.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:15

Well, I think that they teach you to strike like I mean, nothing's off limits, like the eyes, the throat, the groin. Like it there's no honor and thieves, right, at the end of the day, right? You you if you're in a life or death situation, what what's the old saying? All's fair and love and war, right? And you don't say, well, I better, you know, that would be disrespectful if I kicked him in the nuts or whatever. Fuck that. I'm going home. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like somebody's getting kicked in the nuts, or my child, yeah, or your jugular is gonna, you know, we're gonna do something with that, you know, what whatever the case may be. But um is my understanding of crop, I mean, they do teach strikes or things against those areas of the body, right? It's just not like the like in in BJJ, right? It's it's the elbows, it's the chokes, of course, but you know, you you could break an elbow with an arm bar or whatever. But I mean, again, all spare and love and war.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:19

Yeah. Um, you know, our combatives are based on distance. So a kick is, you know, it's a distance weapon. And if the distance is not prime for that, you don't kick. So we go to a knee. Um knees are unbelievably effective if you if you can control the the opponent. Um hammer fists and a straight regular fists, elbows. You know, elbows is one of my go-to's just because it's the hardest bone in the body, right? And it comes from a nobody's looking at it.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:01

Yeah. It goes straight here. Yeah, nobody's looking at

Half Step Tuning And Vocal Recovery

SPEAKER_05 2:30:05

close elbow.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:06

They're looking. Um, so we are that those are some of the combatives. Uh you know, we're taught we do groundwork, but we're taught the whole point of if if you're on the ground, get up. Of course. Right? Nobody's gonna tap in a life or death situation.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:29

Not in a real fight, not in a not in a Las Vegas sanctioned UFC fight, you know. People tap. No, I'm hey, I'm done, I've had enough.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:38

Brazilian jujitsu can be.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:39

Doesn't happen like that on the street, right? Right. That's only in the movies.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:42

So do what you need to do to get up. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, there's a a whole framework of of the legal aspect of it. We do learn some chokes, and they make it very clear that you know, we train you the mechanics of the choke, we train you how to put it on, how to tighten it. And that's about all we can train you, which means we probably don't do it. Yeah. Because it's such a fine line between going to sleep, you know, being choked out. There's a difference between between a blood choke and a and a uh airway choke. But you know, there's a fine line between going to sleep and going and being dead.

SPEAKER_05 2:31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:35

So that kind of discussion is part of it. Um if you have enough time to put a choke on on the ground, you could have already probably gotten up.

SPEAKER_05 2:31:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:48

But if you don't, and you gotta get up, then it's there. Yeah. You know, it's part of the toolbox. Um and they don't consider, I mean, I guess maybe they consider themselves a martial art. Not in the beginning, they didn't. Uh we don't we have levels and they color code them, but we don't get belts.

SPEAKER_05 2:32:12

There's no belts in Grove.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:14

Only as a as a metric. We don't actually get a belt.

SPEAKER_05 2:32:19

It's not like Brazilian jujitsu where you're white, then you're blue, then you're purple.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:23

I mean, it is to make it uh you know like you're advancing in the sport or the to give you the the advancement to show that you're progressing. And it is it is a structure, yeah, but there's no ceremony. We don't, you know, we're not wearing a gi. Yeah. So we don't get a colored belt.

SPEAKER_05 2:32:42

Yeah. Um you don't have to run the gauntlet or anything like that and be JJ, right? So get whipped with the belt.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:50

I'll tell no, no, but I'll tell you what is interesting about it, especially as an older guy. Um the key to this, and it's one of the big things that they they really, really push, everything is pressure testing. So what they try to do is recreate stress in a testing and a training environment. Because if you actually have to do this, right? If when when you're in a life or death situation or you're under significant stress, you lose about 50 IQ points.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:32

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:33:32

You start to be able to hear less.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:34

Yeah. You see you go deaf. Yeah. Yeah, because I've been in fights like hockey fights or even street fights where you hear nothing. You hear nothing.

SPEAKER_01 2:33:44

And if it's bad enough, you start to see less tunnel vision. So they try to approximate that because then you have to do the the defense, the combative. Not in this comfortable Studio with your training partner and everybody's being compliant, you know, that's how you learn it. Yeah. But then when you get tested, they pressure test. So every level test is heavy pressure. That makes sense. And the way that they accomplish it while remaining safe is you it's you know, it's military-level calisthenics and work workout for the first 20 minutes, then the test starts. So you're gassed and sweaty and tired, and then the test starts. And now it's like, okay, now does right. Um my first level test I don't think we were very good. It was a big it was a big test class, but it took us four and a half hours. Oh just under that. It was over four hours. Wow. And it never stops. There's no break in a in a testing environment. And I'm in my 40s, and everybody else around me is not in my 40s, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:35:10

Right, of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:35:11

And so I had my partner. This first thing that happened is because there were so many people, there's trainers go walking around the room because to keep it, you know, watch people. So I see this shadow out of the corner of my right eye come in my periphery pretty quickly, and I look to my right, and my training partner, the the exercise is inside defense to a right straight. So I look just because it's human nature, right? Something's coming in. He sends the shot and I don't defend it, and he punches me in the eye. And I'm like, oh shit. And I'm like, okay, come on, because now there's a trainer standing there watching us, and he goes, dude, you're bleeding. And I went, Come on, come on, because you can't quit, right? Keep going. So that was an hour or so into it. We're coming in towards the end, and the last two in the first level that you have to do, they're two pushing choke defenses. One of them's from the front, one of them's from the back. But they're pushing, so there's movement involved. And my left leg decides it's done. I get to this day, one of the worst cramps that I've ever had in my entire life. I can barely stand on it. And we have these two to go, you know, to finish. They're bringing me pickle juice, like, you know, you can see the muscle through my leg. Wow. Which is, you know, just all seized up. Yeah, sure. And I gotta stand up and do these pushing, you know, moving. Yeah. And I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? You know, I'm an old man at this point.

SPEAKER_00 2:37:09

I don't feel old, but of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:37:12

End the test and I pass. And at that age, doing this crazy thing, you know, so you get your your they pass you. I just leave, right? You know, there's no ceremony or anything like that. Uh it started at 5 30 in the morning. It's now like going a quarter of 10, and I go to my car, and I feel nothing. Like, I I I don't feel proud. I don't feel like I succeeded. My body is in such a state of like trying to find homostasis again. It's like, where's our equilibrium? Yes. What did you just do? Yeah. And so I'm just driving home and then I start thinking, I I should feel better. Not physically, but like my body just wouldn't let me feel anything. My brain was completely finished. So I go home, I crash, and uh it was like two days later when I went, Wow. I I get it. You know, I went from the first six months going, this is not good for me to uh at nine months was my first level test to passing it and going, I I am not the best at this. If it takes you 2,000 reps, it's gonna take me 8,000 reps to get it to muscle memory, but I'm gonna keep doing this.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:01

Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 2:39:02

You know, and I s I have. Yeah. Um and so just recently they uh and of course it's a community as well, which you know is important. But um I don't have a lot of you know Zach and my business partner, you I don't have a lot of friends, yeah. Just not that way. Yeah, sure. But this community is is and I don't have really heavy conversations with these people, but there's an acceptance. I know them, they know me, they know that I'm safe as a training partner. So they offered uh they're doing three things that were only offered to certain people. Um one of them is situational awareness and at the end of the summer is one of them is a handgun, and you can train to be a practitioner of it, or you can train to get certified to be an instructor. And they kind of encouraged me that I should probably think about that. You know, it's more in depth, it's more intense. Um so I'm doing that. Very cool, which is it's very cool. Yeah, you know, and I'm like, Are you guys sure? Yeah, you know, you you you don't want the other Chris, you want like me, sure, yeah. This guy, and they're like, Yeah, no, we think so.

SPEAKER_05 2:40:30

Well, that's good. I mean, it's great that you found something that you you enjoy going to, and it's an outlet. You're learning something very valuable, but it's also an outlet to release stress and energy and and whatnot. And I I've often said, you know, is especially females should be trained in some kind of discipline, especially something like a Brazilian jujitsu, where you know, you're most women are gonna be at a disadvantage if a if a man is trying to rape them or you know, just you know, assault them somehow, you know, it doesn't matter how big a boy you are, if you break something on that man, like an elbow or something like that, it's it's it's game-changing for most people, right? Now you're gonna have those freaks of nature that you'd have to kill them, right? But you you hope you, like you said earlier, you hope you never have to get to that. And and those that art is like fighting from your back or defending yourself from your back, right? Because, you know, even even even if you're a guy, you go into a bar, how how long does a a bar fight stay on its feet? 12 seconds, 15 seconds, and then you're both on the ground rolling around doing whatever you do, right? That's where that's where you're gonna be really effective is with some kind of ground defense or offense for that for that matter. What is going on um musically with you and Zach? Is there anything in the works for you guys right now that the listeners of Backstage Pass Radio can uh maybe learn more about or that you can share with the listeners?

SPEAKER_01 2:42:15

Yeah, so um we have two new records. Uh one of them is finished, and by the time this drops, it'll probably be out. Um it's called The Rodeos in Town.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:32

Love that song, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:33

And it's the whole nature of the record and the songs are that they're uh it's full band, but it's acoustic. Yeah, right. Okay. Um, so you think like Graham Parsons um kind of vibe, yeah, and that was on purpose, right? He wrote them in that that mindset, and he's like, I want to record him in that mindset. So um our European guitar player, uh Ralph Shraven,

Krav Maga For Real Life Stress

SPEAKER_01 2:43:11

he was um James Burton's touring guitar player for a period of time. James Burton from Elvis and uh Ricky Nelson. Um phenomenal, phenomenal musician, but it's all the uh the additional stringed instruments that very few people play, right? Mandolin, dobro, pedal steel, just killer, killer. So it uh you put a lot of that on there, right? As opposed to everybody's banging away on a guitar. Um so that should be out when this drops. Then there's a second one which will probably be two and a half, there's probably two and a half records worth of content um that has everything from stuff that we recorded in my studio in in France, so at least five years old, to stuff that we cut drums on at my house here um at the beginning of the year. Uh and that's gonna be the band more electric. Uh and we'll finish that one and mix it at my place. Okay. That doesn't have a name yet. Okay. But it I'd say we're 70% tracking wise.

SPEAKER_05 2:44:37

Very cool. Well, I had Zach play um rodeos in town here in my studio with with the Mevo cameras, actually. And um I can't remember if it ever got I can't remember if it ever got posted now, but um I love that song. That's a great song. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah, real cool song. Um, of all the music that you've done over the years with Zach from an album perspective, what which one would you call the nearest to your heart? Is there is there one that really sticks out for you? I I know that's kind of like saying I have one favorite kid and I don't really like the others as much, but um you know, um I I don't know if I could pick just one.

SPEAKER_01 2:45:32

Um because they each have so different. There's they're different, but they each have from a a creation standpoint, you know. Because there's a lot that's going on, sure, and it's all down to a a a very small number of people. You can't say, well, I really enjoyed that one because uh you know Eddie Kramer produced it. We do, yeah, it's us. Exactly. Um the first one is is special because it was in a three million dollar studio in the hills of Austin. This guy's pool house was three stories, you know. Um and it was a 24-track studer, any microphone that you could think of, you know, C12s, Neumann's, 1950 Gibson J50 acoustics, just a real um Fairchild compressor. And if there's any recording geeks out there, they'll know what I'm talking about. That's unheard of. Uh you know, you want a clavinet? He has one in his closet, a real one. Yeah, you know, that kind of stuff. Sure. So the sound, and we had uh the engineer and the guy that mixed it, uh, Dave McNair. He mixed all the Los Lobos records, he mixed Instep by Stevie Ray, and he's now a world-renowned mastering engineer. So we had him attached to it. So it's a very special record because of that. And we were playing all the time, so we were really tight. Then um, you know, fast forward, there's like Marrow, which was the first one that we did wholly in my house in Texas. Um then Waking Up the Vultures was uh done in my studio in France, you know. So they're it's they're all special kind of for their own reasons. Yeah. Um and you know, the the clever answer would be well, my favorite one is the next one. Yeah, of course. But I I listen to them more than any human being in the world because of the work, right? I'm mixing it, I'm doing that. Yes. And then I don't listen to them ever again. Um so if I were to hear a song from one of them, you know, all it's gonna do is bring me back to a place in time. Place in time, what happened, what was I fighting against? Yeah. Oh, I hate how that one sounds because I've figured something out. Because what I try to do every time we make a record is how am I gonna make this sound like a million dollars with a hundred dollars? Right now, I have a lot more than a hundred dollars worth of gear, but they're not million dollar stuff.

SPEAKER_05 2:48:43

Absolutely. Well, I was with you guys um at Sugar Hill for a bit of the recording of the miles to the miles to go record, and I think that was what back in 24. And I loved the outcome of that record, and that's probably I've listened to all the whole catalog, and I think that's probably one of my favorite ones out of the whole catalog. Sure. And um, and I think my track on there is Caroline Don't Mind. I love that song. I don't know if you have one on there that kind of resonates with you or not off that specific record or not.

SPEAKER_01 2:49:19

But um, I mean that one was unique, you know. Like I said, everyone has a has a thing because we did get to go in to one of those places, right? And so all those rhythm tracks sound like a real studio. And um, that gives everything else that comes after it this foundation that you just can't get around. Yeah. Like I said earlier, that the big acts don't do it in their bedroom.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:56

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 2:49:57

So that one is special for that. Um, as far as the songs, um I don't know. I I think the I I I think it was pretty cool what we did with guitars and dogs.

SPEAKER_05 2:50:13

Kind of amped it up a little bit, huh? Made it more heavy.

SPEAKER_01 2:50:16

And you know, it was unique for Zach to do that. So he came with this idea, you know, and he's like, check this out. And it's like, wow, that is cool. Yeah, because so different.

SPEAKER_05 2:50:28

Like to me, that's like a that's like a real acoustic song. Of course. You know, like that's and and maybe I say that because that's all I've ever heard him play that is on the acoustic.

SPEAKER_01 2:50:41

Well, we have a recorded version of it on uh Marrow. Okay. And it is acoustic. Okay. I'm playing acoustic, so is he. Okay, right? Rhythm section, but it's an acoustic song. And it's supposed to be because the lyrics are so important, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:50:59

To take that and then do this version of it, and to have Zach say, Let's do guitars and dogs too. I love that, man. That's something Rush would do or something, you know. Sure. And he didn't want to do a new song, right? Interesting, yeah. Which as a writer for him is very strange because he's the ideas just keep coming. Yeah. So he and I so I think that's really cool. As a fan, yeah. I would really like to listen to my band do that, you know. Then there's one on uh Waking Up the Vultures, it's the last song on the record. It's called Silver Box. And it's three, it is our our tip of the hat to rush, right? Because it's three different parts, song parts that change tempo and change style, and it starts off with the heaviest guitar, right? Just killer rock and roll, slows down in the middle section to one of those weird Zach Riffs, weird timing. It's it goes to it's like in 12 or something, and then it ends with a piano ballad thing. And I love it. I think it's really, really yeah, I'll have to go back and listen to that one again. And we wrote it like Rushwood, where there's you know, part one, one, two Roman numeral.

SPEAKER_05 2:52:28

Yeah, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:52:29

And I love it for that reason because it's so different from what we normally do. Of course.

SPEAKER_05 2:52:34

You know, well, I know I know you're uh anti kind of we talked about it a little bit earlier, you're kind of anti-social media, but is there currently a presence for you or Zach on any of the socials that the listeners of Backstage Pass Radio um can find you, like new music shows? Any is there one that you guys gravitate to or um Zach is.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:00

He's you know, for the same reasons that you have to be. Yeah. Um I think he's Facebook. Okay. Uh so they can check that out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:53:12

Um that's Zach, Z-A-K, Zach Perry, P-E-R-R-Y, and the beautiful things. And you guys, your I think your most of your catalog, if not all of it, is out on Spotify for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:24

It's on Spotify, it's on Apple.

SPEAKER_05 2:53:26

Yeah, and I think it's under, I think you have to find the whole thing through Zach Perry and the Beautiful Things, not just Zach Perry band. Um, I could be wrong there, but I I I think I'm correct. So for the listeners looking for the projects that Vern has been on, you know, for the better part of 30 years, um, Zach Perry and the beautiful things, that's where most of the stuff lives, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:50

I think we managed to finally get everything under that. We've changed the name three times in the last 30 years. Um but I think we've managed to get all of it under that banner. Uh so they should be able to find most of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:54:10

Well, Vern, I uh I I appreciate you dropping by. I I appreciate you sharing the story, and it's as cool as I I thought it would be. And and I know that you know you you thought it, and then you know, you even said it like, I don't, I don't know what we're gonna talk about. It's not like you can go out there and Google me and find a bunch of stuff to like topics that we can talk about. I said, that was another one of those, yeah, hold my bear, we'll figure it out. And here we are. I'm looking down three hours later. We're we're sitting here, still probably could keep going, but I've got a a dinner plan that I've got to get to. But um, I appreciate you being here. Keep me posted on the new developments um with with the with the music coming out with Zach. I appreciate you um uh being a friend first

New Zach Perry Records And Closing

SPEAKER_05 2:55:00

and foremost. And I also appreciate you back, Phil and Chris, and honoring the the shows that we do have coming up. It's always a treat to get out and play with you, man. Like uh it's it's cool for me being that guy that uh I've never considered myself an elevated musician in any way. I'm I'm a pretty humble guy when it comes to the music part, but to get to play with guys like you and Chris is special to me, it really is. And I wanted you to know that. So I I appreciate you being here and and talking to me about all things Vern Vinard, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:55:32

Yeah, thanks for having me, man.

SPEAKER_05 2:55:33

Yeah, my pleasure. I uh I also will ask the listeners to like, share, and subscribe to the podcast on Facebook at Backstage Pass Radio Podcast, on Instagram at BackstagePass Radio, and on the website at BackstagePassradio.com. You guys remember to take care of yourselves and each other, and we will see you right back here on the next episode of Backstage Pass Radio.

SPEAKER_03 2:55:58

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Backstage Pass Radio. Backstage Pass Radio. We hope you enjoyed this episode and gained some new insights into the world of music. Backstage Pass Radio is heard in over 80 countries, and the streams continue to grow each week. If you loved what you heard, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave reviews on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback means the world to us and helps us bring you even more amazing content. So join us next time for another deep dive into the stories and sounds that we are musical and play. Once no women, keep what's going, keep exploring, and keep the passion of musical on.